The OP provided this information:
I don’t know if these are lifelong friends, The OP didn’t say so in the first post. You may know this but I don’t.
You say very correctly “attempt” a second, third, fourth marriage. There is no such thing as a second, third, or fourth marriage. There is a first marriage and anything thereafter is adultery. (Now if the “first marriage” was annulled, then it never existed in the first place…)
But, again, the OP did not specify in the first post whether the reason this marriage was invalid was due to one or both spouses already being married or any of the other reasons why the marriage might be invalid. Perhaps one or both found out that they were impotent on their wedding night. Perhaps one had been sterilized and withheld it from the other. Perhaps the husband was a diocesan priest or a permanent deacon who did not get a dispensation or perhaps the wife was a nun who wasn’t released from her vows. Perhaps the wife killed her husband’s first wife. Perhaps some other reason that it was invalid. I don’t know from the first post, as the OP didn’t give a reason for it being invalid.
Remember, in my initial response, I said, I don’t know all the details. I still don’t.
Unless this couple came out and said, “the diocesan tribunal said that we have invalid marriage but we don’t care…” or “yeah I got a divorce and never bothered to get an annulment and don’t intend to…” or some other direct declaration that the marriage is invalid, any deduction we make is based upon an assumption. And, unless the couple has out-and-out declared that the marriage is invalid, per the above canon, we are not competent to make that determination about them. And unless you are the tribunal, the Ordinary, the rota, or the Pope, you aren’t qualified to render judgment on whether the marriage is valid or not.
How do you know*, *assuming this is a “second marriage” for one or both,that the couple didn’t very quietly take care of the matter and then get the marriage convalidated. Maybe they didn’t want to have any kind of scandal at their home parish (since they are coming from out of town, I would think it reasonable to hypothesize that they could be members of another parish) so they dealt with it as quietly as possible. The OP may have been aware of both marriages but not been made aware of the annulment and subsequent convalidation…because it was done quietly.
The above is an assumption too…but at least it is a positive assumption.
The OP didn’t give enough facts in the first post, so I don’t know if she withheld facts from us or if she didn’t have all the facts to begin with. That’s why I asked in my initial post, do you know that the marriage wasn’t annulled?
The point is,** unless I know all the pertinent facts, I don’t care to go off and make a premature, and perhaps incorrect, judgment.** My suggestion to the OP stands as it is: unless she definitively knows that it is invalid, Can 1060 says the presumption is that the marriage is valid.
