When all these fail, recourse can be had to a dispensation.  The Church reserves the right to give dispensations for all impediments.  Canon III of the twenty-fourth session of Trent says:  “If anyone shall say, that only those degrees of consanguinity and affinity which are set down in Leviticus [xviii, 6 ff.] can hinder matrimony from being contracted, and dissolve it when contracted; and that the Church can not dispense in some of those degrees, or ordain that others may hinder and dissolve it; let him be anathema.”

[Sidenote:  Inheritance]

The minute and far-fetched subtleties which the Roman Church has employed in the interpretation of these relationships make escape from the marital tie feasible for the man who is eager to disencumber himself of his life’s partner.  The man of limited means will have a hard time of it.  The great and wealthy have been able at all periods, by working one or more of these doctrines, to reduce the theory of the Roman Church to nullity in practice.  Napoleon had his marriage to Josephine annulled on the ground that he had never intended to enter into a religious marriage with her, although the day before the ceremony he had had the union secretly blessed by Cardinal Fesch.  On the basis of this avowed lack of intent, his marriage with Josephine was declared null and void, and he was free to marry Louisa.  A plea along the same lines is being worked by the Count de Castellane now.  Louis XII, having fallen in love with Anne of Brittany, suddenly discovered that his wife was his fourth cousin, that she was deformed, and that her father had been his godfather; and for this the Pope gave him a dispensation and his legitimate wife was sent away.  The Pope did not thunder against Louis XIV for committing adultery with women like Louise de la Valliere and Madame de Montespan.  It is certainly true that in the case of Philip Augustus of France and Henry VIII of England the Pope did protect injured wives; but both these monarchs were questioning the Vatican’s autocracy.  The matrimonial relations of John of England, Philip’s contemporary, were more corrupt than those of the French king; but, while the Pope chastised John for his defiance of his political autonomy, he did not excommunicate him on any ground of morality.  The statement of Cardinal Gibbons is not entirely in accordance with history; he does not take all facts into consideration, as is also true of his complacent assumption that outside of the Roman Church no economic forces and no individuals have had any effect in elevating the moral and economic status of women.

Questions such as those of inheritance belong properly to civil law; but the canon law claimed to be heard in any case into which any spiritual interest could be foisted.  Thus in the year 1199 Innocent III enacted that children of heretics be deprived of all their offending parents’ goods “since in many cases even according to divine decree children are punished in this world on account of their parents."[392]