can you marry your first cousin in catholic church
Cousin marriage In Roman Catholicism, all marriages more distant than first-cousin marriages are allowed,[166] and first-cousin marriages can be contracted with a dispensation.[167] This was not always the case, however: the Catholic Church has gone through several phases in kinship prohibitions. At the dawn of Christianity in Roman times, marriages between first cousins were allowed. For example, Emperor Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor, married his children to the children of his half-brother. First and second cousin marriages were then banned at the Council of Agde in AD 506, though dispensations sometimes continued to be granted. By the 11th century, with the adoption of the so-called canon-law method of computing consanguinity, these proscriptions had been extended even to sixth cousins, including by marriage. But due to the many resulting difficulties in reckoning who was related to whom, they were relaxed back to third cousins at the Fourth Lateran Council in AD 1215. Pope Benedict XV reduced this to second cousins in 1917,[94] and finally, the current law was enacted in 1983.[167] In Catholicism, close relatives who have married unwittingly without a dispensation can receive an annulment.
Cousin marriage It is allowed in Japan, though the incidence has declined in recent years.[16]
Marriage license Today, they are a legal requirement in some jurisdictions and may also serve as the record of the marriage itself, if signed by the couple and witnessed.
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