Her first marriage was to a man who was part of some kind of elite military unit. Neither of them were Catholic, but they were both baptized Christians and got married in a Methodist chapel.
The marriage ended in divorce in less than a year.
In the first months of marriage, she discovered he was e-mailing romantic and sexually-oriented messages to other women. (Whether there was physical adultery she does not know.) He used to go out at night with no explanation, and return forbidding her to ask questions.
Sally's husband had immediately turned abusively controlling and threatening, starting when they were on their honeymoon.
He told her once that if she ever tried to "find out his personal business" (for instance when he was out all night without explanation) he knew how to "make her disappear so that they'd never find the body."
Long story sort, at one point he threatened to kill Sally and/or himself with a gun, she got away and called 9-1-1, and he was taken away by the police. In the process, the police searched their apartment and seized four duffel bags of weapons and other equipment her husband had stolen from the military. The police took him to a VA psychiatric hospital.
If Sally could prove all this she could get an annulment. Trouble is, it was 20 years ago.
The only piece of documentation she still had in her possession to prove the truth of this story, after 20 years, was a receipt the police gave her when they carried all the weapons out of the apartment.
She remarried ten years later in a civil ceremony, and she and her present husband Brad have an 8-year-old daughter who was baptized Catholic and received the Sacraments of Penance and Communion in the Catholic Church. She and Brad are simply longing to become Catholic, and get their marriage convalidated in the Church, but the whole process of annulment ground to a halt because Sally doesn't have the papers that would prove her story, and they can't contact the respondent (ex-husband) to ask questions.
Sally is a daily Mass-goer. You see her quietly weeping in the pew because she wants to receive Communion but cannot. She longs to have her present marriage convalidated, but she cannot. This is the kind of situation where I think the pastor should be able to make a finding of nullity for Sally's less-than-one-year first marriage (to a man who was a sociopath from the git-go) and free her to convalidate her second marriage, so the whole family can be in peace in the Church.
A sad story, but how do we know that it’s accurate? Maybe the ex would tell a different story. Wouldn’t it be bad precedent to make a finding of nullity based on the word of only one of the parties involved? Would it be fair to burden pastors with the responsibility (and the potentially unreasonable expectations) that would likely arise were they to be vested with the authority to make such a unilateral decision? The tribunal process (imperfect though it may be) ensures a greater measure of integrity than putting pastors in the position of making a judgement call.
What a terribly sad story. Here is the part I don't understand: why does the RC church regard a non-Catholic marriage so binding as to prevent a Catholic marriage? I'm not saying it is wrong; just wondering how the policy is taught.
"Sally" needs to clear this up, not cry. She needs to find the money for a good private investigator who will get her the facts and the records she needs, without her having to contact him. For all she knows, he may be dead or have been declared incompetent from the time of his first hospital commitment.