Eastern Marriage: If the priest is the minister of the sacrament, how could annulments be possible?

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In Eastern Catholic weddings, the priest is the minister of the scrament; while in the West, the couple is the minister of the scarament.

If the couple have an impediment to marriage in the West, it’s not a sacramental wedding. The fault is on the couple, and not on the church.

But in the East, wouldn’t the ministering of the priest automatically make the marriage sacramental… thus can’t be annulled?
 
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I have never heard of the priest being the minister in the east. That doesn’t sound right. Do you have a source saying so?
 
semper_catholicus said:
I have never heard of the priest being the minister in the east. That doesn’t sound right. Do you have a source saying so?
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Yes, this is one of the theological differences between East and West.

Here is the citation from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
1623 According to Latin tradition, the spouses as ministers of Christ’s grace mutually confer upon each other the sacrament of Matrimony by expressing their consent before the Church. In the tradition of the Eastern Churches, the priests (bishops or presbyters) are witnesses to the mutual consent given by the spouses,124 but for the validity of the sacrament their blessing is also necessary.125
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This is echoed in the Code of Canon Law for the Eastern Churches, but it best understood by reading the writings of Eastern theologians on the subject.
 
My hunch is the same way in which other sacraments administered by priests can be afterwards considered invalid:

The priest can give absolution in confession, but what if the penitent was actually consciously holding back a mortal sin? Or was not truly sorry? The priest gives absolution, but the person is not truly forgiven.

Similar with baptism: The priest could indeed baptize, but what if that person had already been baptized? Or what if that person didn’t have the right dispositions?
 
CatholicHere_Hi said:
In Eastern Catholic weddings, the priest is the minister of the scrament; while in the West, the couple is the minister of the scarament.

If the couple have an impediment to marriage in the West, it’s not a sacramental wedding. The fault is on the couple, and not on the church.

But in the East, wouldn’t the ministering of the priest automatically make the marriage sacramental… thus can’t be annulled?
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This is definitely an area of inconsistent practice and Latinization in the East.

But the principles remain the same. An unmarried male and an unmarried female who are free to marry and freely give their consent are still necessary, even if the priest confers the sacrament. What if consent is lacking in some way? What if a person were so compromised by mental illness or severe immaturity that true consent is not possible? Orthodoxy, with recourse to Ecclesiastical Divorce, has not really had to grapple with what this means as far as the validity of the Sacrament.

Annulments are not unheard of in Orthodoxy, but they are usually reserved for obvious cases of a marriage that is incompatible with the sacrament in an obvious way. Bigamy or consanguinity come to mind.
 
What if one of the spouses lied to his/her spouse and to the priest and was already married? No marriage can be joined.
 
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“If anyone present is prepared to pay the ransom of the bride, let him pay now or forever hold his peace.” ?

😜🤔:roll_eyes:
 
babochka said:
You can’t kidnap your bride?!?! It’s an ancient Slavic custom, you know, still alluded to in pre-marriage rituals.
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And now that I think of it, weren’t the abductions usually staged by the time of SS C&M?

hawk
 
If teh same defects in giving consent exist in the couple kneeling before an eastern rite priest exist then the marriage could still be null.
 
The marriage is never annulled in the East. The Church only recognizes a number of civil.divorces and allows 4 times re-marrying, but in front of God if we remarry we will be judged together with all our spouses if we have more than one marriage. We are taught to thus care for our spouses even if we divorced them in this life.
Yeah… pretty scary if you look into it, and it does make you think hard of those promises you make in front of the altar. I don’t know that many people who divorced in my life in an EO country.
 
Mary888 said:
and allows 4 times re-marrying,
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4??

One remarriage is usually allowed (barring fault in that party), and a second is often allowed. A third is never allowed, to the point that an emperor was deposed over it . . .

hawk
 
Yes 3. That makes 4 marriages in all. Hard with numbers! What about… what was that thing? 😁
 
but if the third re-marriage is never allowed, that fourth never happens.

1st marriage always allowed
2d marriage/first remarriage usually allowed, unless barred
3d marriage/second remarriage often allowed, but discretionary.
4th marriage–whoops, you heretic! get off the imperial throne 🤣
 
Mary888 said:
The marriage is never annulled in the East.
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So what would it be called in the situation in which, to use an extreme example, a man and woman had married and it was later discovered that they were brother and sister?

Or the case of bigamy? Or fraud, when someone is not who he says he is. Stolen identity?

While these are rare, they do happen. (Bigamy is not as rare as one might hope. It is not uncommon for an immigrant to move to America for better opportunities and conveniently “forget” that he has a wife already. )

I have discussed this at length with an Orthodox priest and he has explained that there is a process for acknowledging that “marriages” of this sort are not marriages at all and “remarriage” after this sort of tragic situation is a true crowning and does not have the penitential character of a remarriage.
 
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