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If Catholics and the Orthodox reconcile their disagreements regarding papal primacy and the filioque, there lies two potential practical problems: contraception and remarriage/divorce.

I think the former may be less of a difficulty. I'm not sure if contraception is widely endorsed in the Orthodox Church.

But divorce may be a serious issue, which leads me to a question. I find the concept of annulments, insofar as a certain number of years lapse and children are conceived, to be flawed.

Yet how do Eastern Catholic annulments work, or better yet, are justified, without accepting the Latin sacramental theology regarding marriage, i.e. the couple ministers the sacrament and therefore their preparation and consent determines its validity?

I had hoped some Eastern member would reply, but to me, a Latin, this is a red herring.

Can you be saying that an Eastern Christian can really marry without agreeing to what he is doing? Or that one incompetent to agree or unable to understand is bound by the words of the priest?

Here's an example where Byzantines and Orientals differ. The Syriac Orthodox, like their Catholic counterpart and the Malankara Churches have a canonical process for annulment:

See: http://www.soc-wus.org/ourchurch/constitutioneng.html
Chapter Twelve
The Sacrament of Matrimony

The Byzantine Orthodox also have a process of annulment, but it is limited to the handful of canonical criteria that create an impediment to marriage in the first place; e.g., consanguinity, lack of consent, pre-existing marriage or betrothal, marrying outside of the Church, etc.

I don't think the theology is fundamentally at odds. But they are different.

And the Mystery of Crowning, in the Slavonic tradition (as far as I have read), asks that the couple whether they commit themselves freely, whether they have reserved themselves for anyone, etc. The free consent is necessary, it is not sufficient to make the marriage sacramental, as the exchanging of vows occurs prior to the Mystery of Crowning in the church.

But if one reads the text of the Mystery of Crowning, it is obviously the priest who is the minister.

The free consent isn't sufficient to make a Latin marriage sacramental either. The minister of the sacrament is different, okay, but where else is the difference? Where is this "accepting the Latin sacramental theology regarding marriage" that you say is necessary, as if it were some foreign body to choke down?

Latin sacramental theology regarding marriage is not that of Byzantium. This does not implicate necessarily there is a fundamental doctrinal difference, but it is different enough in terms of the scheme of sacramental theology as a whole that it did not lead the East to the annulment practice that developed in the West, whereas it might have if the Latin development of sacramental theology had been wholly embraced by the East. While it is true that the East does practice annulments, e.g. for incestuous marriages or if one party were still married, it did not develop along the same lines. The East too has a long history of permitting divorce on the grounds of economia.

Insofar as the Eastern churches largely share the sacramental theology and patrimony of the Orthodox churches, I was asking how does the Eastern Catholic churches structure and practice annulments. I was particularly curious if its application was conservative or given the notion of economia it was liberal (and perhaps moreso than Rome). Though, I should say, because one may do something out of economia does not mean one must. So I thought this might be the reasoning for Eastern Catholic churches having an annulment system similar to that of Rome (whereas they the Orthodox practice before and, I've read, even for some time after).

To put this back in the ecumenical perspective of my question: I do not see the Orthodox simply "recasting" ecclesiastical divorces as mere annulments. And I think this is most certainly true given the now liberal fashion in which annulments are given.

The Eastern Orthodox argument goes something like this: The concept of annulments as they have developed in the West is alien to Orthodoxy and quite frankly silly. It is absurd to say, in a vast majority of annulment cases, that "nothing happened," when a couple clearly exchanged vows, consummated their marriage, bought a house, lived as a married couple before their parish community, and even had children. Unless the marriage, say, failed three months in and they had no children (or some equivalent situation) to somehow attempt to retroactively assess the psychology of the parties at the time and their intentions to determine whether there was really ever a marriage, when at present the annulment is sought largely because the relationship has broken down in a manner similar to those seeking a divorce, is absurd.

I'm, more or less, restating an argument made by a Greek Orthodox convert whose husband of 15 years was unfaithful. She tried to salvage the marriage, he sought and was granted an annulment, left her and their children, and married the other woman sacramentally in the Roman church. To her this is totally flawed and the whole "process" is merely to "save face" in regard to the absolute indissolubility of marriages, while basically granting divorces.

I am sure a conscientious Roman Catholic finds the current use of annulments to be an aberration, so this is not quite the point. But in the East (Orthodox), if there were a young couple and one of the spouses cheated, then walked out of the marriage, if the spouse left behind remarried, he or she would be able to receive communion (after repentance insofar as it is necessary), even though the new marriage would not receive the Mystery of Crowning and not be considered sacramental. In the West, there would be sincere sympathy for whomever is in that situation, despite that they will never have children or a family in the same sense, at no fault of their own. But remarriage would be considered a mortal sin and insofar it is maintained, it would bar the person from communion.

Perhaps I was not precise enough. The difference of sacramental theology may be peripheral and the real disagreement is how to pastorally handle broken marriages. The West tends toward annulment, working it out, or separating and remaining single. The East accepts all of these and possibly, depending on circumstances, a second marriage. (For instance, in the aforementioned example, the spouse that was left would be permitted to remarry and receive communion, while the other -- I believe -- would not).

And this practice is reflected in the canon attributed to St. Nicephorus the Confessor (806-815) specifies: "Those who enter a second marriage are not crowned and are not admitted to receive the most pure mysteries for two years; those who enter a third marriage are excommunicated for five years." And it most certainly precedes him. The Orthodox hold this was the practice in the East from the beginning. Origen (ca. 184-253) in his Commentary on Matthew XIV (23) notes that some were allowing divorce and remarriage which he found problematic, though he conceded: "They did not act wholly unreasonably because apparently they tolerated something outside of what has been prescribed and handed down to us in order to prevent something worse from happening."

I'm not endorsing the Orthodox position per se nor am I a fan of liberal hand outs of annulment, but these two positions to a degree are not reconcilable and that was the point of my question. To the extent that these disagreements and approaches are rooted in divergences of marriage theology, what is the structure and reasoning of Eastern Catholic annulments if it does not adopt Latin theology wholesale? I was not attacking Latin theology; Greek theology is legitimate as well. It was a sincere question.

I don't see why.

This would suggest that that spouse lacked the understanding of marriage and/or the I tent to permanently bind himself, making the marriage a nullify.

So, then, Doc holds to the tautological argument behind the "lack of form or intent" rationale most often used by Latin marriage tribunals in this country: the failure of the marriage is proof that there was lack of proper form or intent, because the marriage failed--even if this happens twenty years or more after the fact. No wonder people are cynical about the process.

No, don't attribute that to me; it's simply the logic that would be used.

OK, then. The logic, however, is flawed because it assumes human personality is static and undergoes no growth or regression over time. A man may fully believe that marriage eternally binds the man to the woman. He may grasp this truth intellectually, or emotionally, or both. But the reality of human relations is often very different from the ideal, and over time he may find that he really didn't understand--or that he no longer believes it to be true, or that he just doesn't care. The situation may become so untenable that the marriage is no longer sacramentally fruitful, because, of course, Eastern Christians believe there must be synergia between the human will and the Holy Spirit if the sacrament is to be efficacious and contribute to theosis.

So, it is logically false to assume that the breakdown of a marriage indicates a defect of form or intent by one or both parties. At the time of the marriage, both may have fully understood and followed the form and the intent of the sacrament; both may have lived it for many years, only gradually to discover that the conditions and assumptions that pertained at the beginning no longer pertain at the end.

Under such conditions, it is false to say that the failure of the marriage per se constitutes a failure of form and intention. It is more honest to say that the marriage has broken down and is no longer spiritually nourishing--indeed, may have become spiritually toxic, so that it is better to break the marriage than to endanger the souls of the people locked into it.

The same logic of oikonomia says it is also better to allow the innocent party to remarry (but no more than twice!) in a non-sacramental union, rather than to expose them to the spiritual dangers that come from attempting to live in celibacy when one has not been given the gift.

In fact what you describe Stuart as the tautological argument has been argued against for almost two decades by the Vatican in one of its characteristic non-crackdownish crackdowns. The arguments made are very like the ones you present.

It is interesting that there are more annulments in the U.S. than in the rest of the Catholic world combined. I would say this is due to the confluence of several factors. First, Americans divorce more than people in traditionally Catholic countries; second, Americans want to remarry in the Catholic Church more than people in traditionally Catholic countries.

If we look at countries like France, Austria, Italy, or even Spain and Portugal, all of which are nominally Catholic, we see that people don't necessarily get married, or if they do, don't get married in a Church service. If they do get married in a Church service, they tend not to get divorced, even when their marriages break down. They might move out, and they might start living with other people, but unless there are children and/or property involved, divorce is messy and expensive, so why bother? Assuming they do get divorced, they often don't remarry, because there is no stigma attached to living together. Either they stop going to Mass at that point, or they go and receive communion anyway, because they know--and the priest knows that they know--and they know the priest knows that they know that he knows--that the priest will give them communion anyway. After all, he's probably got a piece on the side, too.

So, Catholic culture in much of Europe has very different priorities than it does in America.

The specific case being discussed, though, was a party engaging in adultery almost immediately after the marriage. In this case, I'd be inclined to agree with the western thinking; either the adulterer lacked the capacity to understand or contra marriage or he committed fraud in inducing the spouse to marry.

In the case of "almost immediately" (in less than a few months), the Eastern Church would most likely concur that no real marriage occurred, and nullify it as well. Where things get fuzzy are three, four or five years down the road--then it becomes a harder choice. For long-term marriages that fail, there is no question but that a real marriage existed at some time, even if it doesn't exist now.