Consent (in Canon Law)

Consent (in CANON LAW), the deliberate agreement required of those concerned in legal transactions in order to legalize such actions. Words, deeds, writing, or silence bear witness to the existence of this consent. Completeness of consent is gauged not so much by the preliminaries of transactions as by their ratification, which is the psychological development of incipient consent, and gives consistency to legal transactions. The consent necessary to constitute contracts must be internal, external, mutual, and deliberate. Some authorities claim that contracts formed without any intention on the part of the contracting parties to oblige themselves are valid; others more rightly maintain the contrary, since the very essence of contracts parties embodies obligation.