DEGREE OF RELATIONSHIP – the distance between two persons related by blood – under Canon Law (used in most states) two persons who descend from a common ancestor, but not one from the other (brother, cousins, etc.) have a collateral consanguinity and a degree of relationship of the same number as the number of generations the furthest is removed from the closest common progenitor; for example, an uncle and nephew are related in the second degree because the nephew is two generations from the common ancestor (his grandfather and his uncle’s father); two brothers are related in the first degree and first cousins are related to each other in the second degree; in lineal relationships (direct lines) each generation is a degree
