I know way too many American Catholics who went into a marriage, cognizant of it as a holy sacrament, but their spouse at a later point decided they did not want to be married, and nothing on Earth can prevent it when the LAW allows it. When one person wants a divorce and other does not, what does the law do? It lets a court absolutely dissolve the marriage.
Despite every and anything the Bible says, which is that the two become one, only one can dissolve it completely under the secular law. What does the other half who does NOT want this to happen supposed to do? AND this is the half that takes their vows as HOLY?
It seems they get penalized far worse than the spouse who gladly uses the law to dissolve the marriage. For the God fearing spouse, it is either getting the Church to declare the marriage invalid from the beginning, which is not necessarily true, but made a “truth” for convenience sake, OR remain celibate and unloved until death.
Let us not conflate love and sex. Many unloving people have sex. Many celibate people are greatly loved by others and are themselves quite loving. Is eternal life worth sacrifice? Is our hope in this world or in the next?
Under threat of mortal sin and eternal damnation for getting remarried.
I agree with you, some of it is harder on someone that is trying to do right, and I have some experience at this. I was married before, then married a Catholic girl (not a church wedding due to the time involved) A bad marriage when I was 20, with a cheating spouse who left, could prevent me from joining her in the church.
After all this, the thing that will ultimately help my annulment go through.....is the fact that she adamantly refused to have children. I’ts kind of a complicated, slow motion affair. If it would have been easier, I would have done it long ago, but want to do it now to facilitate getting children and grandchildren to go to the church more. We’ve had a perfect 30 year marriage.