Hey there guys and gals! For all of you concerned with the validity of a civil marriage, here’s another quote from another of those old books: Impediments to Marriage - From the earliest ages holy Church has annexed certain conditions to the matrimonial contract, which are called Impediments. They are of two kinds: 1. Annulling Impediments, or those which, without special dispensation, make a marriage null and void from the beginning; 2. Prohibitive Impediments, which, without dispensation, make a marriage unlawful and sinful, though not invalid. I. The Chief Annulling Impediments 1. Age. Men who have not completed their sixteenth, and women who have not completed their fourteenth year cannot marry validly. 2. Impotency. This differs from sterility: the latter is not, of itself, even a prohibitive impediment; the former is a diriment impediment. 3. Previous and Existing Marriage. This is an Impediment which death alone can remove. What, therefore, God hath joined together, let no man put asunder (Matt. xix. 6). No court, no judge, no legislature, no power on earth, can break the bond which unites husband and wife. For certain just causes, especially for the crime of adultery, they may live separately, but they are still married and cannot marry again. Let it be remembered that no so-called Divorce, no guilt, no desertion, can ever sever the marriage bond. Nothing but a certain knowledge of the death of one party can make it lawful for the other to marry. 4. Difference of Worship. A marriage is null when contracted between a person baptized in, or converted to, the Catholic Church and an unbaptized person. 5. Sacred Orders. A marriage is null, when attempted by clerics in Sacred Orders — Subdeaconship, Deaconship, Holy Priesthood, Episcopate. 6. Solemn Vows. Marriage is null when attempted by Religious who have taken solemn vows, or simple vows which have that annulling power by special dispostion of the Holy See. 7. Abuduction. Between the abductor and the woman abducted with a view to marriage, there can be no marriage as long as the abducted person is in the abductor’s power. 8. Crime. There can be no valid marriage between: (a) Those who during the same legitmate marriage have committed adultery and promised marriage to each other or attempted it, even by a merely civil act. (b) Those who during the same legitimate marriage have committed adultery together, and one of them conjugicide. (c) Those who by mutual cooperation, physical or moral, even without adultery, have caused the death of a partner. 9. Consanguinity. In the direct line, consanguinity invalidates marriage between all ascendants and descendants, whether legitmate or natural. In the collateral line, marriage is invalidated to the third degree inclusively. Notice that in the collateral line, if both sides of the line are equal, there are as many degrees as there are generations on one side; if they are unequal, there are as many degrees as there are generations on the longer side. 10. Affinity arises from valid marriage, and exists between the man and the blood relations of the woman, and likewise between the woman and the blood relations of the man. Affinity in the direct line annuls marriage in any degree; in the collateral line, it annuls marriage to the second degree inclusively. 11. Public Decency arises from invalid marriage, and from notorious or public concubinage; and it annuls marriage in the first and second degree of the direct line between the man and the blood relations of the woman, and vice versa. 12. Spiritual Relationship arises only from Baptism and exists between the Baptized person and the minister, the baptized person and the sponsor. 13. Legal Relationship. Those whom the civil law considers as unable to marry each other, because of the legal relationship arising from adoption, are by canon law, incapable of contracting marriage validly. 14. Clandestinity. Only those marriages of Catholics between each other or with non-Catholics, are valid which are contracted before the parish priest or the local Ordinary or a priest delegated by either of them, and at least two witnesses; except in cases of danger of death or of urgent necessity.
Hope this helps a bit.
Peace,
Gail
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Actually, he was mistaken (in at least this bit, if not more)