“If there has been a valid sacramental marriage, a second union remains an irregular union. However, there is the whole dimension of spiritual and pastoral accompaniment of persons making their way in a situation of irregularity, where it will be necessary to discern between all and nothing. An irregular situation cannot be turned into a regular one, but there are also paths of healing, of exploration, paths in which the law is lived step by step.

There are also situations in which the priest, the guide, who knows the persons, can come to the point of saying: ‘Your situation is such that, in conscience, in your and in my conscience as a pastor, I see your place in the sacramental life of the Church’.”

Christoph Schoenborn

…as Clement VII  must surely have explained to Catherine of Aragon