A phase of this subject which is important and has occasioned much discussion is whether vasectomy causes sexual impotence or not. From a medical point of view, there is no question of impotence; physicians would say it causes sterility only. Most canonists, however, hold that the condition after vasectomy is technically impotence in the canonical sense. Ferreres of Tortosa, a leading Spanish canonist, in several articles in the _Ecclesiastical Review_, in _Razon y Fe_ (xxviii, 376; xxxi, 496), and in his book _De Vasectomia Duplici_ (Madrid, 1913), opposed my opinion published in 1912 and 1913, which then was that vasectomy does not cause canonical impotence. De Smet of Bruges[230] holds that it causes impotence. So do Ojetti,[231] René Michaud,[232] Wouters,[233] Eschbach,[234] Capello,[235] Stucchi,[236] De Becker, Vermeersch, De Villers, and Salsmans of the University of Louvain, and others. Gemelli of Milan[237] agreed with me. The weight of authority is certainly in favor of the notion of impotence, but the arguments are by no means convincing, as virtually every canonist who has discussed the question has made gross misstatements of the physical facts in the case. [230] _Ecclesiastical Review_, September, 1912. [231] _Synopsis Rerum Moralium et Juris Pontificii_, 31st ed., n. 2425. [232] _Nouvelle Revue Théologique._ [233] _Nederlandische Katholische Stemmen_, January 15, 1911. [234] _Analecta Ecclesiastica_, September, 1911, and _La Scuola Cattolica_, February, 1912. [235] _La Scuola Cattolica_, February, 1912. [236] _Ibid._, November, 1911. [237] _Ibid._, November, 1911. If a man or woman is impotent, the disability is an _impedimentum juris naturalis_, and as such it would nullify any marriage, no matter what the dispensation. There are two opinions among moralists as to the essence of canonical impotence. I. Some hold that any permanent obstruction to fecundation, no matter in what stage of the physiological process or in what part of the genital tract it occurs, constitutes impotence. They maintain that a woman whose ovaries or uterus have been removed is impotent. Roman Congregations have promulgated several decrees in peculiar cases permitting the marriage of spayed women; but, these moralists say, it is not clear that in those special cases the entire ovary on each side of the whole uterus was taken out; they hold there is doubt as to the fact. And, since there is disagreement of moralists, the Holy Office or other congregations would give the same decision because of the _dubium juris_. April 2, 1909, the Congregation on the Discipline of the Sacraments decreed that the marriage of a Spanish woman, from whom, according to the physician in charge of the case, the uterus and both ovaries had certainly been removed, should not be prevented. February 3, 1887, the Holy Office made the same decree in the case of a woman from whom the uterus and both ovaries had been removed.