PERPLEXING CASE. - Before the Code, authors used this term for the case of a marriage to be celebrated or to be validated (quasi-perplexed case) as a matter of urgency, when the faculties to dispense from impediments, especially diriment ones, were lacking.
The c. p. was so called because it often used to lead the parish priest or the confessor into great perplexity, since at that time there was no positive provision of law on the matter and the solutions given 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 regarding the existence of a diriment impediment, and 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, nor could the celebration be deferred without danger of grave harm.
With the power granted, besides to Ordinaries, also to parish priests and confessors by virtue of can. 1045, most of the difficulties have disappeared, so that there is almost no longer 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 a greater number, qualify it as an urgent case (v).
Some author, not very appropriately for precision of terminology, uses 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 sense. v. URGENT CASE.
Bibliography2 works
Pietro Palazzini