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Nevetheless, there are (very limited) grounds under Canon Law, for annulment of marriage. The Church cannot disbar a person from applying for annulment and must notify the other party upon receiving such an application.

Considering Mr. Gingrich's application is something that the Church has to do, however spurious or offensive the grounds might be. It is a fundamental principle of jurisprudence that somebody who is acting in a position of judicial or quasi-judicial authority, is bound to hear the merits and decisions cannot be arrived at summarily or arbitrarily. Also, all parties must be heard and they must be given every opportunity to make their representations. Even if they don't, it does not necessarily mean that Mr. Gingrich's will be granted his application.

I do believe that if two baptised persons are married under the rites of the Church, both need to fully understand the sacramental nature of what they are enterting into and I would argue that if that understanding is absent, then the marriage cannot be regarded as sacramental and is not therefore a marriage in the sight of God.

As you know, the sacrament of marriage in our Church is not something to which anyone else is a party. It is the self giving of a man and a woman to each other in holy matrimony before God alone, to which the Church merely bears witness. It is therefore rightly considered to be indissoluble. But it necessarily follows that these elements must be conscientiously present within a marriage for it to be regarded as such, in the sacramental sense, since it is only sacramental marriages that are indissoluble under Canon Law.

I have no idea what Mr. Gingrich's position is. Without knowing the circumstances of his first marriage, I cannot give you my opinion as to whether his second marriage was in fact a sacramental marriage. If it was not, then he will almost certainly be entitled to have it annulled.

The Canon Law can sometimes be as rigid and uncomprising as any other law, but what you have said about the principle of the indissolubility of a sacramental marriage in general is absolutely correct and is of course the scriptural basis of the law.

It does however, cause difficulties.

As we know, marriages can become stale, loveless and unhappy. My second marriage would never have been recognised by the Church of Rome and as far as it was concerned, we were adulterers and fornicators. This was very hard because, whilst it lasted, ours was a mutually self-giving and loving relationship that I do not believe could have been anything other than a gift from God. A further irony is that but for her having been a Catholic, albeit a non-practising one, I would never have become a Catholic myself though I did not decide to convert to Catholicism until nearly a year after we had split up. I sometimes feel that she gave me to God after she had finished with me herself.