I understand that the Church never recognized the civilly legal marriage of my sister and her husband. That’s why he was told during the conversion process he was “in the eyes of the Church living in sin.”
He was told that to proceed he’d have to get a church annulment of his first marriage, which was NEVER going to happen. Perhaps another alternative would have been to get a legal civil divorce from my sister or, he’d still have been ‘living in sin in the eyes of the Church.’ Barring that, it wouldn’t be a “past” sin that was to be forgiven. Ergo, under the circumstances, no conversion could go forward.
So far as I know, no other Christian denomination even has an annulment process. That’s strictly Catholic. So there was no asking of another minister to annul his/her church’s marriage. It was his first wife who absolutely refused to agree to a Catholic Church annulment. 25 years after the fact, despite having remarried civilly herself, she was still not accepting the legal divorce, so with that mindset, you can see that an annulment was absolutely out of the question.
I really don’t know what my brother in law would have done about converting had my sister not died. It was a tough spot to be in for him. So, assuming Mrs. Gingrich I did agree to the Church annulment, he was just awfully lucky.
Listen I sympathize with your story to a point, but i still think you either don’t have the whole story or you are leaving something out. In either case, I made a decision last year not to bother with religious discussions on this website. I have no doubt that your motives are entirely pure, but experience tells me that we will inevitably be joined by trolls who just want to attack Catholicism.
If you are sincerely interested in getting an answer to your question, I welcome you visit your local parish, and ask a priest. He will be happy to answer you. If that is too much trouble, look up any Catholic Church online, call the rectory, and tell them you have a non-urgent matter that you wish to discuss with a priest. Again, you will have your answer in less than five minutes.
Good luck, God bless you, and Merry Christmas.