Hi xpistou,
You are correct that the use of c. 1095 can be seen as an insult to a person’s humanity. Obviously, from Adam and Eve onwards, man and woman are made for each other and marriage is our natural state and people do have a right to marry (the “ius connubii,” as they say). So, telling a person that he is incapable of marrying, either because of a lack of the use of reason or a lack of discretion of judgment or an incapacity to assume the rights and obligations of marriage (1095, 1-3) is like telling them they are not able to do what people can, by nature, do.
Only the incorrect use. The correct use is no more dehumanising than diagonosis by a doctor or insanity defence in criminal trial or appointment of a custodian to enter into contracts on behalf of an insane person. Plus, marriage contains an exchange of duties and rights (it’s more than that, but it does contain it). If someone is unable to perform those duties, that person is unable to assume them. Simple as that.
There are people who are incapable of marrying the same as there are people incapable of committing the crime or entering into a contract. Not pretending does not diminish the dignity of a sick person. Pretending does. To pretend that an insane person can give valid consent to marriage, that would be dehumanising - to that person and to the other spouse. It would be grossly dehumanising to expect someone to stay “married” to a mentally afflicted person who cannot stay faithful, cannot stay with one person forever, cannot get his mind to have children or cannot share a “bed and table” without turning someone’s life into hell.
I can give you more examples than just marriage: if someone attacks you, you have the right to defend yourself even if that person thinks you’re a Martian or believes you’re a threat based on a tick in your eye. In fact, you can defend yourself from a person who’s being forced to attack you. There’s nothing dehumanising in not lying down and allowing yourself to be shot, beaten or whatever. If you have an insane partner in a company, you can get him precluded from decision-making and you don’t dehumanise him by preventing him from conducting business like a free person. Or voting, for example. The state does not dehumanise unfit parents by taking children away from them for those children’s good. Not in principle - in all these cases. It can only be dehumanising when it’s used improperly, that is, someone is precluded from those rights on the basis of a slight disorder or a shortcoming that is not even a disorder. Contrary, in the normal situation, it would be dehumanising to force people to submit to an investigation conducted by an officer with paranoid schizophrenia, to suffer the effects of business, political or parental decisions made by a clinically delusional decision-maker, to hold them to witness given by a compulsive liar, to hire a diagnosed kleptomaniac as a shopkeeper etc. Same way, you can’t tell people to marry compulsive cheaters, runaway brides, eternal 12 year olds, people with a mental block against having children and all sorts of people who are not as repulsive as wife-beaters, violent despots, raging substance users (of whom some may actually be genuinely sick and not at personal fault).
Obviously, there can be abuse. For example, someone could bring a couple of recent photos of me having a cup in a pub or home and try saying that because I got drunk a couple of times when I was young, once or twice in later life etc., then there is a pattern and I’m an alcoholic and a supposed addiction prevents me from being able to marry, boom, he believes my marriage was null. Or someone could gather proofs that my arguments are long, I always want to say all that’s on my mind, I wash hands all the time and scoff at people for being inconsistent, and therefore I must be an OCD case. Or say, someone could maliciously misrepresent my utterly charming personality as an NPD case. Naturally, I would probably look like I wanted to inflict a slight injury upon him for that, but that wouldn’t make me a raging bully, either. Thankfully, we have judges in tribunals, not just plaintiffs, we have doctors as expert witnesses (and not just parties talking) and we have appellate tribunals and the Roman Rota in case things go awry.
But I repeat, some people are incapable of marriage and it is neither wrong nor dehumanising to recognise and react to that fact. Not any more than defending oneself against an attack by an insane person, denouncing a compulsive liar at a witness stand, not hiring a diagnosed kleptomaniac as a shopkeeper etc.
