That is an outright falsehood and one must be careful because endorsing such a position is likely tantamount to implicit and possibly even formal heresy. The Vatican has outright rejected the above quoted assertion firmly, repeatedly, and consistently. For instance, in a 1994 Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church the CDF categorically denied that a person could use the internal forum to annul their own marriage unilaterally and remarry. In fact, anyone who does and remarries is to be denied Holy Communion for violation of the marriage covenant. In this letter the Church declared:
7. The mistaken conviction of a divorced and remarried person that he may receive Holy Communion normally presupposes that personal conscience is considered in the final analysis to be able, on the basis of one's own convictions(15), to come to a decision about the existence or absence of a previous marriage and the value of the new union. However, such a position is inadmissable(16). Marriage, in fact, because it is both the image of the spousal relationship between Christ and his Church as well as the fundamental core and an important factor in the life of civil society, is essentially a public reality.
8. It is certainly true that a judgment about one's own dispositions for the reception of Holy Communion must be made by a properly formed moral conscience. But it is equally true that the consent that is the foundation of marriage is not simply a private decision since it creates a specifically ecclesial and social situation for the spouses, both individually and as a couple. Thus the judgment of conscience of one's own marital situation does not regard only the immediate relationship between man and God, as if one could prescind from the Church's mediation, that also includes canonical laws binding in conscience. Not to recognise this essential aspect would mean in fact to deny that marriage is a reality of the Church, that is to say, a sacrament.
The rest of the letter can be found at the Vatican's website here.
The Tribunal does not annul a marriage, the Tribunal only recognizes that marriage was not valid to begin with.
YOU are in danger of sin, as you are might very well be bearing false witness against your neighbors who have taken the rational approach that:
1.) A formal annulment would be SINFUL due to mentally unstable people who might well retaliate or act out on such formal process.
2.) The Tribunal does not “grant” or “perform” an annulment, therefore, if the “internal forum” or ones own conscience clearly dictates that the marriage was invalid, the formal process is not required.
THIS IS CHURCH DOCTRINE, and you are mixing apples and oranges when you say it is not.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=235519
I have given you quotes from Liguouri Press, and now from Catholic Answers, and from other Catholic organizations.
You play the part of the self-rightious Pharisee, wanting judgment and damnation on those who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in these situations.
There are MANY Catholic authorities who disagree with you. More to the point, You can find NO Priest or Bishop or Cardinal or Pope who will say, unequivocally, that every person who goes through a divorce and then remarries, without benefit of a formal “External Forum” annulment, will be committing sin.