Abduction in Catholic Canon Law

Abduction as a public crime and a marriage impediment from the Catholic view. Abduction is often divided into Abduction by Violence (Raptus Violentiae) and Abduction by Seduction, or Elopement (Raptus Seductionis). The former is when (a) a woman evidently reluctant, and not consenting either to the flight or to the marriage, is forcibly transferred with a matrimonial intent from a secure and free place to a morally different one and there held under the abductor's influence by force, physical or moral, i.e. threats, great fear, or fraud equivalent to force, as it is a well-known axiom that "it is equal to be compelled to do a thing as to know that it is possible to be compelled to do it", (b) a woman enticed by fair words and fraud and deception consents to go with a man for other reason than matrimony from one place to another where he detains her by force or fraud equivalent to force, in order to coerce her into a marriage to which she objects; (e) a woman who, although she had already consented to a future marriage by act of betrothal, vet strenuously objects to abduction, is carried off violently by her betrothed or his agents from a free and safe place to another morally different and there detained until she consents to marry him.