§ 149. α) General church offences

1. Apostasy (ἀποστασία). This occurs when a baptized person renounces the Christian faith and adopts some other, non-Christian religion. Apostasy may be either deliberate or committed from fear. A lay apostate is, in the first case, excluded from communion for life, and in the second case for twelve years;[1] a clergyman is, for the first, expelled from the church; for the second, if he repents wholeheartedly, he retains the honor and the name of clergyman, but without the right ever to perform priestly functions.[2]

2. Heresy (αἵρεσις) is the deliberate and persistent denial of a dogma that the church has determined, or the public confession and defense of a dogmatic error that the church has condemned.[3] For heresy the church punishes with anathema.[4]

3. Schism (σχίσμα) is of two kinds: schism of faith and schism of the church. The first occurs when some separate from the church over differing views on secondary matters of church teaching, or over questions that are easily reconciled.[5] The second occurs when some refuse obedience to the lawful hierarchy.[6] For schism of the first kind the canons determine penalties according to the degree of departure from the established teachings of the church; for schism of the second kind the canons impose deposition on clergy, and subject to excommunication the laypeople who follow the schism.[7]

4. Simony (Σίμωνος αἵρεσις). This dreadful and grave offence consists in trading in the grace of the priesthood. It takes its name from that Simon who offered the apostles money to obtain priestly power.[8] Guilty of simony is not only the one who grants ordination or advances someone to hierarchical rank for money, nor only the one who receives ordination for money, but likewise all who act as intermediaries in that transaction.[9] Money need not here be taken in the literal sense, for besides money or another gift given as a bribe to obtain the priesthood, simony also occurs: a) when someone is ordained or advanced as a reward for some personal service,[10] b) when this is done out of considerations of kinship or friendship (nepotism),[11] c) when persons who hold power are used to obtain, contrary to church law, some dignity in the church,[12] and d) when various means are employed to secure votes for election to some office in the church.[13]

The object of the offence of simony is: a) when for a bribe the office of bishop, presbyter, or deacon is received or given,[14] b) when in the same way some position in the administrative hierarchy of the church is obtained or given,[15] c) when money is exacted for communion or other sacred rites,[16] and d) when out of base gain the power of judgment and punishment is abused, so that, against justice and for one’s own profit or out of some personal passion, an unjust judgment is pronounced and an undeserved penalty imposed.[17] Given the gravity of this offence, anyone is permitted to bring an accusation against a simonist, and every witness is heard without distinction and his testimony fully credited, except in the single case where it is proven that he deliberately intends slander;[18] and, by that same gravity of the offence—since simony overthrows the whole edifice of the church’s organism—the canons impose for simony the most terrible penalties: a bishop found guilty of simony of whatever kind is deposed; one who obtained ordination or a dignity in one of the ways mentioned above is subjected to anathema, once he has been deposed from the rank unlawfully obtained; and persons who acted as intermediaries in such an unlawful transaction, if they belong to the clergy, are deposed, while laypeople are subjected to anathema.[19]