[Campion]

You aren't Catholic; your wife isn't Catholic, so I'm not sure why you're trying to inject your situation into a Catholic discussion. Put another way, if you and your wife were Catholics, how do you know her first marriage could not have been declared null by the Church?

You don't, so I don't understand what your objection is. You're not subject to Catholic Church law, so you didn't go by it. I'm not subject to Indonesian law. I don't go by that. There's no difference.

As Mayflower correctly notes, this isn't really a Catholic thing. It's a New Testament thing.

As a point of information, if your wife were a Catholic, and her first marriage was (as you say) a civil ceremony, the annulment could have been granted on those grounds alone, without even considering the various other problems in her first marriage.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“As Mayflower correctly notes, this isn’t really a Catholic thing. It’s a New Testament thing.”

It is not a complete reading of the words of Christ.

In Mathew, Jesus also said ...

“Jesus replied, “It was because of your hardness of heart that Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but it was not this way from the beginning. Now I tell you that whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman, commits adultery.”

[nobamanomore]

Finally a word from someone who understands how things work, not how they think it works.