[Question:]{.underline} Whom did the children of Adam and Eve marry?
[Answer:]{.underline} Adam and Eve handed on to their children the obligations of the natural law. The natural law does indeed forbid the marrying of brothers and sisters, as the crime of incest, and one repugnant to all peoples.
However, we know it as an article of our Faith that all human beings are descended from our first parents according to the flesh, from whom we inherited original sin. Consequently, the children of Adam and Eve had no choice but to marry close relatives, either brother, sister, nephew or niece. The theologians explain this by making a distinction between the primary and the secondary precepts of the natural law. The secondary precepts are not so necessary nor so well known as the primary precepts. Consequently, on occasions in the Old Testament God gave dispensations from these secondary precepts for special reasons. Thus it was that He permitted divorce under certain conditions, on account of the Jews’ hardness of heart, that he permitted polygamy for the rapid growth of the Israelites, and that for the short period that it was necessary He permitted intermarriage between close relatives. It must be born in mind, however, that the genetics of the human race were much purer and stronger at that time.
Of course, this temporary permission did not continue, and could never exist under the New Law. The Church recognizes that close consanguinity is an impediment to marriage, and will never dispense in cases of brother or sister or uncle or aunt. With a proportionate reason, she will dispense in the case of first cousins.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.