PERPLEXING CASE
They called it a “perplexing case” (caso perplexo), before the Code, the case of a marriage to be celebrated or convalidated (a quasi-perplexing case) on an urgent basis when the necessary faculties to dispense from impediments, especially diriment ones, were lacking.
The perplexing case was so called because it often caused great perplexity for the parish priest or confessor, since at that time there was no positive provision of law on the matter and the solutions proposed by the authors were conflicting—at least in the case where there was bad faith or vincible ignorance on the part of the penitent or of both spouses regarding the existence of a diriment impediment, and on the other hand the marriage had to be celebrated urgently because the spouses were already in church or everything was ready for the wedding and it could not be postponed without risk of serious harm.
With the power granted, not only to Ordinaries but also to parish priests and confessors by virtue of can. 1045, most of these difficulties have disappeared, so that there is hardly any longer reason to speak of a perplexing case.
Various authors, however, continue to call it by that name, while others—and in greater number—prefer case (v.).
Some authors, somewhat inappropriately for the precision of terminology, have used this now technical term to refer to entirely different cases (cf. G. Desterle, *Casus ex can. 2341 perplexus*, in *Perfice munus*, 14 [1940], pp. 90–96), considering only its grammatical and logical sense.
V. CASE.