Replies

And she hasn’t even the Sacraments to console her.

She could receive the Sacraments every single day if that was her highest priority. Another FReeper (Steve something, can't remember his exact handle) has pointed out repeatedly the option of a "Josephite" marriage in cases like this. She and her husband could go to a different church (one where nobody knows their business). Single Catholics and homosexual Catholics must practice chastity. An exception for those remarried civilly for a second time is morally inconsistent.

The "option" of going to another parish where nobody knows them, is just an evasion. I'm sure people do this, and that's down to their own conscience, I suppose (what the Church calls the "internal forum") However, the Holy See has ruled out the internal forum solution as a valid way of resolving marital validity questions. Such issues must be submitted to the Church's canonical processes (a marriage tribunal).

Therefore this does not solve the problem that Sally has not received a Declaration of Nullity concerning the first attempted marriage, and the related problem that she and her present husband cannot get their present (and only) marriage convalidated in the Church.

Do you --- seriously--- think relying on the "internal forum", already excluded as a solution by the Holly See, is to be preferred to a reform of the marriage law in which their pastor could make a Declaration of Nullity under certain circumstances?

"Josephite" marriage --- with no sexual relations --- St. Paul himself says that people can abstain from marital relations only by mutual consent, for a time. For Sally to impose this on her husband unilaterally would be a violation of the spousal debt.

" The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights,
and likewise the wife to her husband.
For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does;
likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does.
Do not refuse one another
except perhaps by agreement for a season,
that you may devote yourselves to prayer;
but then come together again, lest Satan tempt you through lack of self-control."
1 Cor. 7:3-5