When the dissolution of a Roman Catholic marriage hits the front pages, non-Catholics are often lost in a maze of civil and church legalities. Last week's case in point was the broken union of Sloan and Bill O'Dwyer, and it provided a good capsule course in Catholic marriage law.
In 1948, when the 32-year-old model caught the smiling Irish eye of the 58-year-old mayor of New York, they had both been married before. Mayor William O'Dwyer was two years a widower. In 1938, Texas-born, convent-bred Sloan Simpson had married an insurance executive named...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
