INABILITY. — Impediment to validly performing certain specific acts. In order to safeguard the common good of society, whether civil or religious, it is sometimes necessary that the legislator have the power to enact, among the laws regulating the juridical value of human acts, some that can render juridically invalid acts that by their nature would be valid.
This does not mean, however, that positive law prevails over natural law, because in some cases it is natural law itself that requires, for the common good, that certain juridical acts not be absolutely valid, but valid conditionally upon a positive provision of the human legislator. The latter, however, may do this not at his own discretion, but only when required by the general interest of the community, e.g., to prevent fraud and other kinds of harm, to safeguard good morals, to protect the interests of minors who may be exposed to risks in aleatory contracts, to suppress clandestine marriages, to punish the crime of simony in contracts, and so forth.
It is commonly acknowledged, both in practice and in doctrine, that both the Church and the State have the power to enact such laws. With regard to the Church, this is explicitly recognized by a declaration of the Council of Trent (Sess. XXIV, de Sacramento Matrimonii, can. 4). The laws in question regulate especially the matter of contracts, wills, Marriage, the conferral of benefices, adoption, vows, religious profession, and oaths. Ecclesiastical law (cf. CIC, can. 11) removes validity from a human act in two ways: either by directly and radically removing its validity, in which case it is called irritant, or by declaring the subject incapable of performing it, in which case it is incapacitating.
1. It is therefore that juridical condition in which a person finds himself as a result of an incapacitating law, which causes the acts performed by that person to be rendered invalid and thus without any efficacy; e.g., according to cann. 1072 and 1073, clerics in sacris and religious with solemn vows or vows equivalent to them cannot contract a valid marriage; can. 1076 establishes that in the direct line of legitimate or natural consanguinity, and in the collateral line up to the third degree, marriage is always null; can. 1075 states that the following do not validly contract marriage: those who, during a previous marriage, committed adultery with a promise of marriage, or attempted it, even in its civil form; those who committed adultery followed by spouse-murder; and those who, together, physically or morally, procured the death of the spouse of one of the two; can. 1067 § 1 provides that a man before completing his sixteenth year and a woman before completing her fourteenth cannot contract a valid marriage; and can. 157 says that an office vacant through resignation or deprivation following a judgment cannot be conferred by the same Ordinary who accepted the resignation or pronounced the judgment upon his own or the resignee’s family members, relatives, or relatives by marriage up to the second degree; according to can. 36 § 2, excommunicated persons, those under suspension, and those affected by a personal interdict after a judgment are incapable of validly obtaining pontifical rescripts; according to can. 2294 § 1, those affected by infamia iuris cannot obtain ecclesiastical benefices, pensions, offices, or dignities, and the same applies, under can. 2345,
to clerics who have usurped or are holding rights or property of the Roman Church (vedi also cann. 2346, 2368 § 1, 2394 § 1 and 2095 etc.). In all these cases it is therefore clear that i. directly affects the person whom human positive law presupposes to be naturally, by his own right, capable of performing the juridical act that the law renders invalid.
I. may be absolute, or erga omnes, or relative. For example, the incapacity of a novice to alienate his property is absolute; the i. resulting from the absence of the age required to contract marriage is absolute; whereas, for example, the i. of a confessor to absolve his own accomplice from a disgraceful sin is relative. I. may also be imposed by a law either expressly or by means of words having the same force. For example, cann. 504, 534 § 2, 2294 § 1, 2345, 2346, 2368 § 1, 2390 § 2, 2394 n. 1, 2395, 2413 expressly establish i.; cann. 1036 § 2, 222 § 1, 116, 150 § 1, 162 § 5, 171 § 3, 555, 765 do so by equivalent wording.
Finally, the i. arising from a mere inhabilitans law does not bind the conscience to omit a juridical act, but only obliges one to undergo the effect of the i. imposed by that law; an i. arising from a law that is not only incapacitating but also prohibitive, on the other hand, binds the conscience to refrain from performing juridical acts (it is not lawful, for example, to attempt marriage in the presence of a diriment impediment).
It may happen accidentally that an imposed i. has force in the external forum but not in the internal forum, e.g., if it is based on a law that presupposes a fact or circumstance which in the particular case does not exist (as, for example, in the case of a doubtful impediment of disparity of worship, if the party is in fact baptized, the marriage is valid in conscience).