Why not say “annulment”?
The term “annulment” implies making void something that was at one time considered valid. “Declaration of nullity,” by contrast, is a finding by the tribunal (church court) which declares that the conditions necessary for a valid sacrament were not present from the very beginning. Among these lacking conditions are (1) sufficient understanding of what the sacrament of marriage entails as a vocation to a permanent, faithfully exclusive, life-giving union between a baptized man and woman ordered toward procreation and holiness and (2) the requisite maturity and deliberate intent to make such a commitment that is to last “for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health [in other words, ‘no matter what’], until death.” Our Catholic theology of marriage teaches that a marriage between baptized persons exists in two “dimensions”: as a civil reality (that is, recognized and regulated by the laws and institutions of secular society) and, most importantly, as a sacrament. T
