As to your last sentence, what if the Catholics just said, "No marriage undertaken before Baptism is a real marriage." In such a case your entry would automatically annul any prior marriages. Would that be better?
It's not just "the sanctity of marriage," it's what marriage IS. It is impossible (in our view) to have been truly married to someone still alive AND to be subsequently truly married to someone else (who is alive also.) One wife at a time, one husband at a time, AND he is your husband or she is your wife until death do you part. That is part of the esse of matrimony.
So we COULD say, well, those marriages you had when you were unbaptized weren't really marriages and aren't really binding. But it sounds like you (or the women involved) want to say that those marriages were real marriages and now these are two.
For us, that does not compute.
“As to your last sentence, what if the Catholics just said, “No marriage undertaken before Baptism is a real marriage.” In such a case your entry would automatically annul any prior marriages. Would that be better?”
Well, yes, quite frankly, yes. It would make more sense.
Think about it.
I do understand what you are saying, but I am now at the risk of saying that my first marriage didn’t exist and my current wife’s first marriage didn’t exist, either. Children came from these unions, so therefore, do they now not exist?
That is the major issue.
Of course they exist, but if the marriages they came from, are not valid, after being annulled, where does that leave them?
On more thing to ponder........
I could walk into the Catholic Church, being a thief (or worse) and not have to contact the people I have stolen from (or worse) in the past and still be accepted as is.
Yet, if I come into the Catholic Church as a divorced and remarried man, I need to contact the previous spouse and ask them if they would agree to admit that it never really happened?
huh?
Sorry, I will not now or ever become Catholic.
I tried, it didn’t make sense.
There are other issues but this one just didn’t compute (as you say).