text: Again, NOT SO, "Marty E"! Sacred ordination DOES NOT remove a man's [sic] right or capacity to contract marriage at civil law.  The Roman Catholic church is considerably behind the times on these issues, and has been so ever since the Council of Trent (the Tridentine format which you outlined above!)  .  The civil marriage, without more (such as convalidation, or ecclesiastical  dispensation of any sort) establishes the legitimacy of offspring and heirship at law, which canon law cannot presume to affect.  These facts loomed large in the JP II era where laicizations became few, then nonexistent, with JP II's thumb on the scales of justice!