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Glossary of
Church Terms
Here is a brief glossary of terms often used in the Catholic Church that may not
be completely familiar to journalists who have not had a great deal of experi-
ence in covering church matters. One may hope that even more experienced
journalists will find one or two new insights here. Terms are capitalized only if
they are always capitalized. For example,
archbishop
is capitalized only when
used as a title before a name, but
College of Cardinals
is a proper name in all
uses—so the
archbishop
entry is lowercased but the other is capitalized.
annulment.
Technically called a
decree of nullity
, an annulment of a marriage
is a decision by a church court, confirmed by an appellate court, that a
puta-
tive marriage
was not valid from the start because something was lacking: full
knowledge and consent by both parties, freedom from force or grave fear, or
some other factor needed for a valid marriage. “Putative” (meaning apparent
or seeming) is a key word in the entire process: It refers to a marriage in which
at least one party acted in good faith, believing it was valid at the time it took
place. Children from a putative marriage are considered legitimate even if
the marriage is later ruled to be invalid. This has been a source of one of the
major popular misunderstandings of annulments; namely, that an annulment
somehow makes the children of that union illegitimate. Church law explic-
itly rejects this interpretation, saying that children of a putative marriage are
legitimate even if the marriage is later judged to be invalid.
apostolic nuncio.
Church term for the Vatican ambassador to another coun-
try and the papal liaison with the church in that country. An apostolic nun-
cio, also called a
papal nuncio
, is always an archbishop, and it is his religious
title that is capitalized as a title before his name, e.g.,
Archbishop Pietro Sambi,
apostolic nuncio to the United States,
not
Apostolic Nuncio Pietro Sambi
. See
religious titles before names
.
In a country with which the Vatican does not
have diplomatic relations, the official Vatican liaison with the church there is
called an
apostolic delegate
. Papal representatives in the United States were
apostolic delegates until 1984, when full diplomatic relations were estab-