D, conversion, and the Eucharist are a HUGE, ENORMOUS, SIGNIFICANT issues. In general, D alone is not a problem because the Catholic Church will not recognize a civil divorce for religious purposes. The sacramental problem arises in two situaitons; First is a new sexual R outside the original marriage--which would be adultery requiring ongoing sacremental confession (assuming each time you were sincere about not engaging in adultery again--hmmmm). In addition, if you remarry without an annulment, I believe this precludes the availability of sacramental confession at all--thereby precluding communion by any honest measure.
So, if I want to D and be celibate, I'm okay. Otherwise I need an annulment. By virtue of my W's recent comments, an annulment might be plausible because she arguably never understood the permanence of M and espouses the view that God just wants her to be happy and sometimes things don't work out. I tried to explore this in my Church and virtually every clergy person I spoke to said to get this crap out of mind and continue praying for the M until such time that a D is a reality--so that is what I am doing, especially isnce my journey in the Faith is in its infancy.
To me, this represents a true test of the sincerity of my conversion. And it is not inconceivable that I would never have another R again (sorry Betsey--I'll leave you to TJ and any others I come up with ) unless your parish will grant the annulment. It's also possible that I could find myself in a state of long-term separation.
