Marriage not valid in the church

[LilyM]

Think of it like this :

You buy a Dr. Pepper. Authentic, cool, crisp. Created by the Dr. Pepper company originally.

You make a trip to wal-mart. Get the Dr. Thunder, different company, same drink (more or less). Dr. Thunder may not be recognized as the Full Dr. Pepper because it was not made in the Dr. Pepper company. Though it may be very similar, it is not up to the same standard (sacrament) as the Dr. Pepper.

Dr. pepper (drink) is Marriage, and Dr. Thunder is marriage as well. But only Dr. pepper is administered by the Catholic Church, or wait… Marriage the Sacrament, not Dr. pepper, haha.

This may be wrong, but I just thought it would be cool to equate marriage to my favorite drink

Nothing like.

It’s not a question of having a ‘worse’ or ‘inferior’ quality of marriage for a Catholic who marries outside the Church, without it being valid and sacramental it’s not a true marriage. That’s what annulment (which can be obtained in such cases) means - the marriage never was a true marriage.

You might have the can in such a case, but there’s certainly no soda inside it of any kind, to run with your imagery.

The Church simply does not recognise marriages in which one party is Catholic that take place outside the Church without a prior permission to do so having been granted (and it usually isn’t except for darn good reason).