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Pauline Previlege
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Pauline privilege
 
–noun Roman Catholic Church.
(in canon law) the privilege given to converts to dissolve a marriage with an
unbaptized spouse if either obstructs the religious practices of the other.

Petrine Privilege
Petrine Privilege or a decree in favor of the faith is a provision in the Canon Law
of the Roman Catholic Church granting a previously married person the right to marry
under certain specific circumstances. The implementation of this procedure is reserved to
the Pope. It involves the circumstance where one of the parties in the marriage is
unbaptized and the other is baptized. If either party wants to become Catholic or wants to
marry a Catholic the first marriage can be dissolved, permitting the person to become
Catholic or to marry a Catholic. Thus, the Pope may act in favor of the Catholic faith.
Another example may be that a Protestant who is married to an unbaptized man falls in
love with a Catholic. The Pope may dissolve the marriage of the Protestant to facilitate
his or her marriage to the Catholic. This is done in favor of the faith of his or her Catholic
fiancé.

Pauline Privilege

Scriptural Authority
St. Paul wrote, 1 Cor 7:12 “To the rest I say, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife
who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any
woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should
not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is consecrated through his wife, and the
unbelieving wife is consecrated through her husband. Otherwise, your children would be
unclean, but as it is they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner desires to separate, let it
be so; in such a case the brother or sister is not bound. For God has called us to peace.”

Conditions
The Catholic Church can dissolve a marriage bond, allowing the Catholic party to re-
marry, if:

Both persons were not baptized at the time of their wedding. Marriage originally not
sacramental.

One party has been baptized, but the other remains unbaptized. Marriage remains not
sacramental.

The unbaptized person departs physically by divorce or desertion, or morally by making

married life unbearable for the baptized person. Just cause for the dissolution.

The unbaptized person refuses to be baptized or to live peacefully with the baptized
person. Unbaptized person is asked.

Civil divorce has been granted by the state. Church cannot be responsible for the
separation.

Some Observations
The Pauline Privilege applies only when both parties were unbaptized at the time of the
marriage. It is not the same as an annulment. The Pauline Privilege dissolves a real but
natural marriage. An annulment is a declaration that no valid marriage ever existed.

If one party was baptized and the other unbaptized at the time of the marriage, the
marriage is still natural but can be dissolved only by the Pope personally, exercising his
authority as the Vicar of Christ and executive agent of divine law. This is called the
Petrine Privilege because it is reserved to the Chair of Peter, and very rare.

If both parties were baptized at the time of the marriage it is a sacramental and
supernatural marriage, and is indissoluble, even if one party abandons his Christian faith.
1 Cor 7:10 “To the married I give charge, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not
separate from her husband.”

There is Biblical precedent for dissolving a marriage between a faithful person and an
unbeliever, when the Jews put away their pagan wives. Ezra 10:1 “While Ezra prayed and
made confession, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, a very
great assembly of men, women, and children, gathered to him out of Israel; for the people
wept bitterly. And Shecani’ah the son of Jehi’el, of the sons of Elam, addressed Ezra: ’We
have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the
land, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this. Therefore let us make a
covenant with our God to put away all these wives and their children, according to the
counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God; and let it
be done according to the law. Arise, for it is your task, and we are with you; be strong and
do it.’ Then Ezra arose and made the leading priests and Levites and all Israel take oath
that they would do as had been said. So they took the oath.”
Privilege (canon law)
Privilege in the Canon law of the Roman Catholic Church is the legal concept whereby
someone is exempt from the ordinary operation of the law over time for some specific
purpose.

Definition
Papal privileges resembled dispensations, since both involved exceptions to the ordinary
operations of the law. But whereas “dispensations exempt[ed] some person or group from
legal obligations binding on the rest of the population or class to which they belong,”[1]
“[p]rivileges bestowed a positive favour not generally enjoyed by most people.” “Thus
licences to teach or to practise law or medicine, for example,”[2] were “legal privileges,
since they confer[red] upon recipients the right to perform certain functions for pay,
which the rest of the population [was] not [permitted to exercise.]”[3] Privileges differed
from dispensations in that dispensations were for one time, while a privilege was
lasting.[4] Yet, such licenses might also involve what should properly be termed
dispensation, if they waived the Canon law requirement that an individual hold a
particular qualification to practice law or medicine, as, for example, a degree.

The distinction between privilege and dispensation was not always clearly observed, and
the term dispensation rather than privilege was used, even when the nature of the act
made it clearly a privilege. Indeed, medieval canonists treated privileges and
dispensations as distinct, though related, aspects of the law. Privileges and indults were
both special favours. Some writers hold that the former are positive favours, while indults
are negative.[5] The pope might confer a degree as a positive privilege in his capacity as a
temporal sovereign, or he might do so by way of dispensation from the strict
requirements of the Canon law. In both cases his authority to do so was found in the
canon law. The pope's powers as a temporal sovereign are recognised in the Roman
Catholic Code of Canon Law of 1983. In practice matters of education are dealt with
though the hierarchy of the Church, rather than through that of Vatican City State, the
residual part of the Papal States.

Academic Degrees
In some instances petitioners sought an academic degree because without one they could
not hold a particular office. Canons of certain cathedrals and Westminster Abbey were
still required to be degree-holders until recent times. The Dean of Westminster Abbey
was required to be a doctor or bachelor of divinity as recently as the late twentieth
century.[6] In these cases, conferring the status of a graduate is the granting of a privilege,
in that the recipient has received a positive favour not generally enjoyed by most people,
but it also acted as a dispensation with the requirements of the canon law. Still, however
they were justified, in canon law, the conferral of degrees or degree status gave
substantial and substantive rights and privileges, and were not merely empty honours.

In the event of degree status being conferred, the recipient was not deemed to hold the
degree in question, but would enjoy any privileges which might be attached to such a
degree—including qualification for office. Conferring the degree itself would of course
would mean that the recipient enjoyed the style and not merely the privileges of a degree.
They might also, for example, be thereafter admitted or incorporated to the same degree
ad eundum at Oxford or Cambridge—though few seem to have been so distinguished. It
was however often difficult to be certain whether the degree itself, or merely its status
and privileges, which was being conferred. Given the ostensible purpose of the papal
dispensatory jurisdiction, it would perhaps be more logical to view all of these “degrees”
as strictly degree-status, and not substantive degrees. But the medieval—if not indeed
modern—concept of the degree is of a grade or status. One achieves the status of master
or doctor, which is conferred by one's university (or in rare cases, by the pope). It is not
an award, but the recognition of a certain degree of learning. It is perhaps significant that
in the records of the (post-Reformation) Court of Faculties, the early “Lambeth degrees”
are described in terms of dispensation to enjoy the privilege of DCL or whatever the
degree might be.[7]

The exercise of the authority to confer such a privilege was often a positive step by the
pope to emphasise his spiritual, if not temporal, authority. During the fifteenth century,
attempts were made in England to restrict the exercise of papal power in opposition to the
Statute of Provisors.[8] To evade the disabilities imposed by that Act on non-graduates, it
became usual towards the end of the century for those clerics not educated at English
universities to obtain dispensations from Rome, including, in a few cases, degrees.[9]
These were positive favours not generally enjoyed by most people, and that they were
dispensing with the requirements of the Canon law was a secondary consideration. They
were also exercised for the good of the individual as well as the good of the church.