http://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=77128NEW YORK - Flavia Fontes was talking on the phone when a headline in a small Brazilian newspaper caught her eye: A paraplegic man was forbidden to get married by the Roman Catholic Church because he was impotent.
SNIP
De Brito was two weeks away from marrying Elzimar de Lourdes Serafim, a widow, in August 1996, when he received a shocking letter from the local bishop denying their application for a marriage certificate. According to canon law, any man or woman who is impotent and unable to have intercourse cannot get married.
SNIP
De Brito became a paraplegic at 15 when he was shot on the way home from the movies. The bullet tore his lung and hit his spinal cord, and doctors only expected to him to live a year and a half. While his friends were out dating and having fun, he was in and out of the hospital, undergoing 25 operations.
SNIP
Their friendship and mutual acceptance - she had no education, he was in a wheelchair - soon developed into romance and they decided to marry. Wedding plans were well underway when a local priest asked de Brito during premarital counseling if he was impotent and de Brito answered him honestly. The priest told de Brito he couldn't marry the couple, which the bishop's letter confirmed.
"If (de Brito) had left the issue in doubt, it wouldn't have been a problem," said the Rev. Dr. Bernard Olszewski, a canon law expert and vice president for academic affairs at Hilbert University in Hamburg, N.Y. "Unfortunately, he gave full disclosure. In a pastoral sense, it would have been better for the priest to have a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy."
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
