Does the Catholic Church sanction marriage with a deceased wifes sister?
The law of the Catholic Church forbids such a marriage. In Catholic law, when a man marries, a diriment impediment arises forbidding later marriage with her blood relatives within the first and second degrees. Unless a dispensation be obtained from the impediment, such a marriage would be null and void. 1129. Why does the Catholic Church object to such marriages? Firstly because husband and wife are so intimately united that they practically become one person. And, as a man has sisters by blood relationship, his wife’s sisters become his by affinity, and he should treat them as sisters, not as unrelated persons. Secondly, his very marriage to one girl in a family is most likely to bring him into frequent and intimate contact with other members of her family. There may be, not only daily association, but even the necessity of dwelling under the same roof. If marriage is out of the question, even after the death of his wife, there is ever so much less danger of such a man allowing an aff
