HENDRIX:
I got married to a woman I knew through my first wife (whom I didn’t married in a Catholic Church). When I and my first wife were separated, I got married to that women knowing fully well that she got married in Catholic Church before, although she divorced her first husband. For more than two years now, I and the woman are not living together again due to her aggressive nature. Is our marriage valid or invalid according to Catholic Church teachings?
FATHER JOE:
Your comment is a bit confusing as to which woman and lacks significant details. Thus, it is very hard to give you a precise or clear answer.
Are you Catholic? Were the other parties Catholic?
A Catholic must get married in the Catholic Church for a bond to be both licit and valid. Prior bonds aside, marriages outside the Church (as before a civil magistrate or Protestant minister) are deemed invalid. They are not regarded as married either by the Church or God.
Marriages that take place in the Catholic Church are regarded as binding until death. If an annulment is granted through the Marriage Tribunal then they might be free to get married again. Otherwise, divorce or no divorce, they are still considered as married. That means that attempted secondary or tertiary marriages are regarded as invalid. It is as Jesus reminds us in the Gospel of Matthew, an opening to adultery.
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