Well she actually does talk to the priest about it, because everyone knows what a bum she married. And everyone feels sorry for her. The priest says that she needs to talk to the husband and have faith that God will give her the strength to carry her through with the descision she made.
I guess it’s a nice way of saying “You made your bed so lie in it.” 
She eventually gets out of the marriage when he dies
We did give you a way within the Church, several of us mentioned annulment.
Annulment is a funny thing. It says your marriage was never canonically valid, you’ve never been really-really-really married, but at the same time if there are children they’re considered legitimate.
The priest is either an idiot (possible) or not knowledgeable of canon law (also possible).
Could you tell us the title and author of this story? Where did this story appear? This sounds like it’s written by someone with little knowledge of the Catholic church. In fact, it sounds like it’s written by someone with little knowledge of how human beings work.
You watched Brides of Christ too, right?
Yes, but I knew all about it before then. I went to a Jesuit school.
IME, that would be a very typical first reaction from a RC priest. The next step would probably be an offer of pastoral counselling. Some priests might take a very 14th-century “you must submit to your husband’s will” attitude, but even in the time period indicated that would be a minority. That would be an even small minority in the case described where the husband has clearly abandonded, or never intended to fulfill, his traditional duties as a provider and protector.
Almost all priests would, if steps such as above failed and the wife communicated the intolerability of the situation, make the wife aware of her other options, even if they didn’t favor the idea.
There’s a nice and easy way out of this. Hire a floozy to seduce him and then catch him with her. Divorce on grounds of adultery, plain and simple. I can’t find the cite, but such setups (occasionally engineered with the knowledge of all parties) were a not uncommon way of arranging divorces pre no fault.
That may justify the civil divorce, but would have no effect on the situation in OP, which concerns Roman Catholic Church canon law. In short, adultery is not automatic grounds for annulment, and the civil divorce would still cause place religious restrictions on the ex-wife.
I am interested in how Canon Law gets around Mathew 5:32 and 19:9.
I don’t think it gets around those verses. It follows them. The Catholic Church does not grant divorces; it grants annulments. This means that it is recognized that there never was a marriage. Certain conditions have to be met for the marriage to be valid and if those are not met there was never a marriage. The people involved likely committed no sin as they honestly thought they were married (of course if deception or coercion was involved that would be different).
Legal divorces can be done. However, assuming the marriage is valid, it only removes the legal rights and the two people would still be married in the eyes of the Church and remarriage or other romantic involvement would be seen as adultery.
Lets take an extreme example. Two people were dating and one person threatened the other that if the didn’t marry them they’d kill their parents/have their father fired/something nasty. Now this should be detected by the priest in premarital counseling, but lets say it gets by him somehow and the marriage goes forward. As marriage must be entered into freely it doesn’t matter that the ceremony happened. There was no marriage. Now if the threatened partner later decides to leave this person they can go to the Church and ask for an annulment. If they can prove the circumstances that make the marriage invalid then an annulment should be granted and that person could then get married in the Church.
You must have gone to the same Catholic school I did! Yep - basically the Church has no beef with a legal divorce; as far as they’re concerned, nothing whatsoever happens. It’s the dating / remarriage thing that’s the problem.
Wendell: as others have noted, simple adultery isn’t grounds for annullment, though as still others have noted, you could try to make the argument that the spouse went into the marriage having no intention of remaining faithful.
That might be a harder argument to make, if the couple were married for many years and then one spouse had an impulsive fling, or there were other problems that developed (that could not have been foreseen) and one partner reacted to the increasing distance by looking for love elsewhere.
Re the OP: I think the lady in that situation could make a pretty good case for the other partner not meaning it to be a true marriage. She might have a hard time getting her priest (and whoever else is involved in an annulment) to believe her if hubby refuses to repeat her remarks however.