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So if the Greek Orthodox don't consider Catholic sacraments to be valid, then they could never reunite with the Catholic Church?

The Orthodox understanding is that only sacraments inside the church are valid, true and grace filled. It makes no judgment, positively or negatively, on the status of sacraments outside the church; and has no ecclesiological explanation for there being sacraments outside the church. It is unified in that sense.

Where there is difference in opinion and practice, it is with the dispensation of ekonomia when receiving converts in to the church.

I believe my statement vis-a-vis bishops or priests is correct, and that there is no canonical basis for surmising they are anything but laymen when entering the church. If historically the practice has deviated from the theology of the church, that is certainly a different matter. Bishops exercise ekonomia (i.e. relax the regulations laid out in the canons) when they see fit.

Interesting, I have been told that I was making sweeping statements for when saying similar things before; I know I have an abrupt manner so perhaps it's just that.

At any rate, not only do Australian Greek Orthodox jurisdictions insist on re-ordination, they also insist on remarriage, and not only for Catholics but also for preists/laypeople ordained/married in other greek jurisdictions.

See paragraph at the top of page 11 of this paper;

http://www.agc.org.au/web_images/Cahill%20paper.pdf

Ned

Dear Ned,

Sounds to me as though the situation with the Greek Archdiocese Down Under may be the personal preference of Stylianos, who is notably anti-Catholic.

But even within the Ecumenical Patriarchate one would look in vain for consistency in the whole matter. To put it in technical terms, the question of whether one should apply economia or akrivia is to be answered on a case-by-case basis.

A strange case occurred a couple of decades ago. A Roman Catholic deacon was received into the Greek Archdiocese in England. The Archbishop was reluctant to take the responsibility of determining what to do about his already existing ordination, so he sent the question to Constantinople. The Patriarch and Synod took the decision to receive the man as a deacon (in other words, not to "reordain" him). Fine.

Well, almost fine. The Cypriot faithful in the parish where the deacon was to serve absolutely would not have it - they insisted that "he is a Catholic deacon". The Archbishop, who was a patient man, simply had the deacon serve elsewhere on Sundays. In the fullness of time, the Archbishop ordained the deacon to the priesthood.

The same faithful in that parish then behaved like gentle lambs, saying "now it is all right" and made the new priest welcome - even though, in their loudly expressed opinion, he had never been ordained to the diaconate.

I refrain from comment.

In the mid-nineties Bartholomew himself (the Patriarch, not the Apostle!) visited London and addressed the Anglican House of Bishops with the words: "as Bishops of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church we . . .", clearly including the Anglicans. Yet one would have to look long and hard to find even a single case of the Ecumenical Patriarchate receiving an Anglican clergyman and recognizing his previous orders.

Reminds me of the recent flap in Romania - people were enjoying causing the Patriarch of Bucharest serious embarrassment by the simple expedient of demanding that the Patriarch answer this question: "Is Michael still the King?". He had, of course, been crowned and anointed King by the then-Patriarch. After dodging the question for several years, Theoctistos has finally, it seems, conceded defeat and now addresses King Michael with full royal titles. Don't know if he also commemorates the King in the services!

Talk about Romania, there was a hilarious episode in the nineteen-thirties. An impressive Anglo-Catholic delegation from England went to Bucharest to ask the Patriarch and Holy Synod to recognize Anglican Orders. The Synod asked the Anglicans "does your Church recognize the Eucharistic Sacrifice, Transubstantiaton, Holy Orders as a Sacrament . . ." and so on. The delegates said: "yes, that is a correct understanding of Anglican teaching." On the strength of this, the Church of Romania issued a statement recognizing Anglican Orders.

When the Anglo-Catholc delegation returned to England, a furious storm of protest erupted, with Low Church and Broad Church clergy and people loudly insisting that the Anglo-Catholics had misrepresented the Church of England. The members of the delegation denied this charge, by pointing out that: "all we said was that this is A correct understanding of Anglican teaching. We never said that there are not other correct understandings of Anglican teaching!"

Again, no comment.

Fr. Serge

I read that when Fr. Placide Deseille and some of his followers were received into Orthodoxy at the Holy Mountain in the 1970's, they were all baptized.

On the other hand, it is my understanding that when Fr. Nathanael Popp, a Romanian Greek Catholic Priest, turned Orthodox in th 1960's, he was never reordained (or was he?) He is now the bishop for the OCA Romanian Diocese

In 1895, two Bulgarian Catholic bishops of the Byzantine rite, Lazarus Mladenov and Nile Isvorov, returned to the Orthodox faith of their youth.

As is well known, the Bulgarian Catholic movement had swelled to some 70-80,000 followers by the 1870's, only to lose most of its members to Bulgarian Orthodoxy once more in the late 19th century. Today there are just about 10,000 Bulgarian Eastern-rite Catholics)

It is my understanding that to be a monk on Mt Athos one must have been Baptized and Chrismated Orthodox. For example, as a convert to Orthodoxy from Catholicism, I'd have to be re-baptized if I wanted to become a monk there.

I wonder, would this still hold true if I were a priest who decided to retire as a monk to Mt Athos?

Another interesting observation: In some cases, ACROD will receive a Byzantine Catholic fully into Orthodoxy simply by a profession of faith (if the BC in question was Baptized and Chrismated in the BCC); but they Chrismate Roman Catholic who were Confirmed in the RCC but never Chrismated in the BCC.

Of course this is done on a case by case basis, but it was an interesting thing to learn about during my process.

Along these lines, this is probably how it was done in Slovakia when all those Orthodox parishes elected to affiliate with the GCC also vice versa earlier when GCC was made to affiliate with the Orthodox. Maybe someone can describe how this was done for entire parishes both ways?