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I don't think I was clear.  Canon Law requires baptized Catholics to get married before a priest.  What happens when a NO baptized Catholic who doesn't attend mass/doesn't practice gets married to a non-Catholic?  What is the chance that such a person would get married before a NO priest?  Even if he/she did, NO priests are doubtful. In the end, are these NO Catholics actually getting married before a priest?  And if not, what's the chance that such a person would get married before a certainly valid priest (outside of the SSPX, R&R or sede chapels)?

I have to wonder how this canon truly gets fulfilled by most who identify as "Catholic" these days.

Vermont,

It’s a complete mess. I remember when Father C. and I would discuss how horrifically difficult it will be for the Church to analyze and formulate a solution for these marriage cases when She reestablishes Herself. 

The Mortara case is interesting on several different levels. It’s one of the reasons the Jєωs hated Venerable Pius IX (A great man!)

I'm surprised that Wojtyla went ahead with the "beatification" of Pius IX after the howls and garment-rending from the Jєωιѕн quarter.  I did read somewhere else, though, that they secretly relished this beatification because it would given them additional ammunition against the Church.

So, it was actually the case of Pius IX that made me reconsider my erstwhile dogmatic sedevacantism.  I ran into a man who had decided that Pius IX was an anti-pope, a heretic.  That gave me pause to consider whether this guy, or Father Cekada's infamous "Aunt Helen," could just denounce any Catholic pope as a non-Catholic anti-pope.  There are a fair number of people who are starting jump on the bandwagon of declaring Pius IX an anti-Pope, therefore rejecting papal infallibility, and basically becoming Old Catholics and/or Orthodox.

What's interesting is that when Pope Pius IX condemned the Old Catholics, he accused them of rejecting the indefectibility (not infallibility) of the Church.  He realized that it was a bit of a circular argument to say that they were rejecting an infallibly-defined dogma when it was the ability of a pope to infallibly define dogma that was being defined.  So he teaches that the Old Catholics are heretical because their conclusion would mean that the Catholic Church had "gone off the rails" ... which is not possible given her indefectibility.  That's why I keep saying that the core problem here really is indefectibility.  People can quibble to a certain extent regarding the precise limits of "infallibility in the strict sense" (as Msgr. Fenton called it), but with the Conciliar Church we're not talking about a problematic statement in an Encyclical Letter, but the establishment of an entirely new theological system, system of worship ... in short, a new religion that, were this change attributed to the Catholic Church, it would be tantamount to a substantial corruption of the Catholic Church, making it unrecognizable as a religion to Catholics who lived and died before Vatican II, and therefore lacking the notes or marks of the One True Church founded by Christ.  That is the problem here more than the precise legal disposition of a heretic pope.

True, but he says "sometimes", and clearly I didn't mean it pejoratively. 

I'm not questioning the wisdom of the Church and her laws when I say that declaring children attaining the age of reason not to be Catholics if they are raised to believe a non-Catholic religion, declaring them legitimate even though their parents' marriage was null ab initio, and retroactively validating a marriage with a sanatio in radice (which can even be kept secret from the objecting spouse) are all legal fictions.  All three fall within the Church's authority of binding and loosing.  Put another way, creating legal fictions are part of that authority.

So, this is precisely why the code treats of those who are baptized into the Catholic Church, as the Church has the right and the authority to impose legal obligations for the conditions required to contract a valid marriage over and above the requirements of Divine Law.  Church has no such authority over those who were not baptized in the Catholic Church, and that is precisely the reason why this legal requirement does not apply to non-Catholics.  Conversely, the Church could at any time lift this requirement and declare that a Catholic could marry validly even in a civil ceremony.  But the Church in her wisdom realizes what grave harm this would do to the Sacrament of Matrimony.

So it is incorrect to call them legal fictions.  When the Church binds on earth, it is bound in heaven, and vice versa.  It's the Church's actual law and it determines reality, and not merely a legal fiction.  To use the term "fiction" suggests that such people are not REALLY married, but the Church is merely pretending that they are for the purposes of subsequent application of law.  When the Church declares a sanatio, the couple do in fact become married in reality, reality being "in the eyes of God".