petrine privilege
Petrine privilege. Eccles. law. The Pope’s power to dissolve a marriage between a baptized spouse and an unbaptized spouse when the Pauline privilege is unavailable and the dissolution would be beneficial to the interests of the church. • The privilege is usu. exercised to dissolve a previous marriage of a Roman Catholic. But sometimes it is applied in the case of a baptized non-Catholic who wishes to marry a Catholic. On rare occasions, the privilege has also been extended to dissolve the marriage of two unbaptized non-Catholics if one of them wishes to marry a Catholic. Cf. PAULINE PRIVILEGE.
