Pearls from the Pedalion: Canons are not Self-Acting and Clergy Serve Grace-filled Mysteries Until They are Deposed

Saint Nikodemos of Mount Athos

Note from the Orthodox Ethos: The Ecumenical and Local Councils contain many canons that call for the disciplining of clergy who commit acts unworthy of their calling. Many of these canons include the phrase “let him be deposed,” stating that those who are clergy should be removed from among the clergy. As St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite explains, clergy do not cease being clergy automatically by violating the canons, but a living synod of bishops who has authority over an errant priest must apply the discipline to the specific erring clergyman for that clergyman to cease being among the clergy. A priest or bishop who violates the canons might be condemned at the Judgment if he does not repent on earth and is never properly disciplined by his bishop and synod, but unless he is deposed by the appropriate authority, he remains a priest and bishop and continues to serve true mysteries. Canon 3 of the Holy Apostles is one of the first canons in the Pedalion that includes the phrase, “If any Bishop or Priest… let him be deposed.”

From St. Nikodemos' footnote to this Canon:

CANONS CANNOT DEFROCK OR EXCOMMUNICATE:

We must know that the penalties provided by the Canons, such as deposition, excommunication, and anathematization, are imposed in the third person according, to grammatical usage, there being no imperative available. In such cases in order to express a command, the second person would be necessary. I am going to explain the matter better. The Canons command the synod of living bishops to depose the priests, or to excommunicate them, or to anathematize laymen who violate the canons.

Yet, if the synod does not actually effect the deposition of the priests, or the excommunication, or the anathematization of laymen, these priests and laymen, are neither actually deposed, nor excommunicated, nor anathematized. However they are liable to stand trial judicially here regarding deposition, excommunication, or anathematization, but there regarding divine judgment. Just as when a king commands his slave to whip another who did something that offended him, if the slave in question fails to execute the king’s command, that slave will nevertheless be liable to a trial for the whipping.

GRACE REMAINS UNTIL DEPOSITION TAKES PLACE

So those mindless men commit a great error who say that at the present time all those in Holy Orders who have been ordained contrary to canons are actually deposed. It is a priest-accusing tongue that mindlessly speaks foolishness, not understanding that the command of the canons, without the practical activity of the second person that is of the synod, remains without any effect. The Apostles themselves unmistakably explain what they mean in their Canon 46. Since they do not say that any bishop or priest who accepts a baptism performed by heretics is already and actually in a state of having been deposed, but that they command that he be deposed, or that he stand trial, and if it be proved that he did so, then they say, "we command that he be stripped of Holy Orders by your decision" .[1]

[1] Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite and Monk Agapios, translated by Denver Cummings. The Rudder, (Chicago, IL: The Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957), pp. 5-6.