PERPLEXED CASE. - Before the Code, authors so called the case of a marriage to be celebrated or convalidated (a quasi-perplexed case) as a matter of urgency, when the faculties to dispense from impediments, especially diriment impediments, were lacking.
The c. p. was so called because it often placed the parish priest or confessor in great perplexity, since at that time there was no positive legal provision on the matter and the solutions proposed by authors were conflicting, at least in the case in which there was bad faith or vincible ignorance on the part of the penitent or of both spouses concerning the existence of a diriment impediment, while on the other hand the celebration of the marriage was urgent, since the spouses were already in church, or everything was ready for the wedding, and the celebration could not be postponed without danger of serious harm.
With the power granted, in virtue of can. 1045, not only to Ordinaries but also to parish priests and confessors, most of the difficulties have disappeared, so that there is now scarcely any reason to speak of a c. p.
Various authors nevertheless continue to call the
case of can. 1045 by this name, while others, and in greater number, describe it as an urgent case (v).
Some authors, rather inappropriately from the standpoint of terminological precision, use this now technical term for entirely different cases (cf. G. Desterle, Casus ex can. 2341 perplexus, in Perfice munus, 14 [1940], pp. 90-96), having regard only to its grammatical and logical meaning. V. CASO URGENTE.