With CXF what should my method signature be to work directly with XML objects.

Question

I have a web service I'm exposing with CXF and I need to work directly with the XML passed in and then need to assign XML from an external source into the response. If I user Object as the parameters and return type I do get a DOM representation which I can work with. If I user Element however I'm informed I can't use it as there are no no-arg constructors.

I.E, I have this

public Object submitGoodness(Object foo)

But want something more like

public Element submitGoodness(Element foo)

or

public SoapBodyElement submitGoodness(SoapBodyElement foo)

I can probably live with Object but figure there is probably a better way. Anyone know what that would be? I don't want any binding as I'm working as an intermediary and need to pass the XML down the chain.