In my opinion the only logical reason for declaring a marriage to be invalid is if one or both of the persons are marrying under duress. For example, if a young woman is forced to marry a man because the marriage was arranged. I might be persuaded to take a step further and grant that if the woman was pregnant, she and he might feel pressured because of family, society, etc. to marry when they really didn’t want to.
For everyone else, after a minimum six month wait, pre-cana, retreats, counseling with their priest, and compatibility tests, if they weren’t sure after that, then nothing could convince them, nothing except living together. That’s the rub, no matter how much you discuss and council, no matter how many retreats you go on, nothing can really teach you what it is actually like living together and raising children until you live it. Marriage is hard, maybe the hardest thing some people do in their lives, even in a so called valid marriage. People change, people get sick, children wear you out, money is sometimes scarce, jobs are bad, etc, and all of that can cause serious problems in any marriage, one might say all of these things are typical to most marriages, but none of these or the many more issues, including infidelity, make a marriage invalid. If I am wrong, then a lot of us are in big trouble.
Not to mention the fact that whether I say divorce or you say annulment, the children are still going to suffer. They are still going to have their lives ripped apart and have to deal with “new” mommies and “new” daddies, oh and don’t forget “new” siblings.
One of the greatest things Jesus ever did to elevate the value of women in society was to prevent their husbands from abandoning them through divorce. Why would we see things any differently simply because we use a different word? Whether divorce or annulment, what comes after is just as devastating.
For better or for worse, in good times and in bad, means just that.
