Father DeCelles speaks in terms of adherence to Christ’s words DIVIDING families etc. and your priest is basically brushing aside Christ’s words to keep people in his pews. Cowardice.
When you think of the number of people who have born the brunt of the Catholic Church on marriage over the centuries, his attitude really seems like a cop out. I know that there are many couples who do not receive Communion because they are in a second marriage with no annulment.
My own grandmother married “out of the church” in 1911 because her fiance’s family hated Catholics. He was not an easy man to get along with and he abandoned the family more than once. When she sought advice fro the Catholic Church, they told her that if she divorced him, all of her children would be considered “illegitimate”. She hung in there and suffered terribly because of it. She never set foot in the Catholic Church again, but she followed all of its precepts and prayed its prayers until the day she died.