§ 77. The Basic Standpoint of the Orthodox Church

III. Ordination of Persons of Another Faith.

The chief guiding principle of the Church in judging the validity of an ordination performed in a society of another faith, and consequently in judging whether or not a priest who has passed over to the Church from some such society is to be ordained anew, has been, and is, the judgment as to the degree to which that society has departed from the teaching and discipline of the Church, and whether it is heretical or only schismatic, and to what extent it is heretical, and to what extent schismatic. In this important question, account is taken, in the first place, of whether a society of another faith departs from the Orthodox Church only in some particular points of faith and particular rites, or whether it errs in the fundamental truths of the Church and holds an altogether perverted teaching, both in matters of faith and in respect of church discipline. The clergy of a society of this latter kind can never be recognized in the Orthodox Church. Further, account is taken of whether the religious society concerned regards the priesthood as a divine institution, and priestly authority as an authority deriving from divine right, or whether it regards the priesthood as some office that is acquired just as any other worldly office, and that is necessary only in order to maintain due order in the performance of certain religious duties. In this latter case, since there is no true priesthood at all, the Church cannot recognize it either. Finally, since the basis of a lawful priesthood consists in the unbroken succession of hierarchical authority from the apostles down to the present day, the Church directs her chief attention to whether that apostolic succession has been preserved in a given religious society; and accordingly, in those religious societies in which that succession has been unbrokenly preserved, the priesthood must be considered canonically valid, even though various opinions exist within those same societies that do not touch the very basis of the Christian faith, or the essence and power of the mysteries. But as soon as that apostolic succession has been cut off in a religious society, and in that society, severed from the unity of the Church, a special hierarchy of its own has been introduced, independent of that succession, then the priesthood of such a society cannot be recognized as canonically genuine either—and consequently, when a priest from such a religious society passes over into the Orthodox Church, he cannot be received into her as a priest, but a new ordination must be performed over him, provided he otherwise has all the conditions and qualities required of a priest of the Orthodox Church.