Ordination and Clergy Discipline in Canon Law

The canons regulate both who may be ordained and how clergy must live once ordained. A catalogue of impediments — age, post-baptismal grave sin, self-mutilation, recent conversion, secular obligations — guards the door to orders; a parallel body of disciplinary canons governs the conduct of those admitted, distinguishing deposition from suspension and forbidding secular pursuits, unauthorized movement between dioceses, and simony. These ancient rules remain the framework within which modern spiritual courts operate.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Canonical Door to Orders

Ordination (cheirotonia) is a Mystery, not a career, and the canons treat eligibility for it with corresponding seriousness (see Holy Orders for the theology of the threefold ministry). A candidate must satisfy both positive requirements — sufficient age, knowledge, and assignment to a definite church — and the absence of a series of disqualifying impediments. The bishop ordains, but he ordains within canonical limits he does not himself set.

Canonical Age Requirements

The Council in Trullo (Quinisext, 692) fixed the minimum ages that remain the canonical standard. Canon 14 provides: “Let a presbyter not be ordained before he is thirty years of age, even if he be a very worthy man, but let him be kept back. For our Lord Jesus Christ was baptized and began to teach when he was thirty. In like manner let no deacon be ordained before he is twenty-five, nor a deaconess before she is forty” (Council in Trullo, Canon 14; trans. NPNF II/14). Canon 15 completes the schedule: “A subdeacon is not to be ordained under twenty years of age. And if any one in any grade of the priesthood shall have been ordained contrary to the prescribed time let him be deposed” (Council in Trullo, Canon 15; trans. NPNF II/14).

In modern practice these minimum ages are among the impediments most frequently relaxed by episcopal economy, the bishop weighing pastoral necessity against the canonical norm (see Pastoral Economy); but the canon, not the dispensation, is the standard.

The Catalogue of Impediments

The canonical impediments to ordination form a recognizable catalogue, each with its proof-text:

Post-baptismal grave sin. Certain serious sins committed after baptism bar a man from ordination even after sincere repentance, because the canons require of the candidate a life that can stand as a public icon of the priesthood. Basil the Great’s canons are the locus classicus: a man guilty of a sin that excludes a layman for years from the chalice cannot be admitted to the altar (Basil, Canonical Epistles, e.g. Canons 3, 32, 51; trans. NPNF II/8). The Apostolic Canons likewise depose clergy for sins that would, before ordination, have functioned as impediments.
Self-mutilation. Apostolic Canons 21–24 treat castration. The natural or involuntary eunuch is not barred: “An eunuch, if he has been made so by the violence of men or in times of persecution, or if he has been born so, if in other respects he is worthy, may be made a bishop” (Apostolic Canon 21; trans. NPNF II/14). But voluntary self-mutilation is an absolute bar: “He who has mutilated himself, cannot become a clergyman, for he is a self-murderer, and an enemy to the workmanship of God” (Apostolic Canon 22). A cleric who mutilates himself “let him be deposed, for he is a self-murderer” (Apostolic Canon 23), and a layman who does so “let him be excommunicated for three years” (Apostolic Canon 24). The distinction is exactly that drawn at Nicaea I, Canon 1, which reproduced the same principle for the council’s own age.
Neophytes (recent converts). Nicaea I, Canon 2, forbids the ordination of the newly baptized: those “just converted from heathenism to the faith, and who have been instructed but a little while” are not to be “straightway” advanced to the episcopate or presbyterate, since “to the catechumen there is need of time and of a longer trial after baptism,” lest, in the Apostle’s words, the novice “being lifted up with pride … fall into condemnation and the snare of the devil” (Nicaea I, Canon 2; trans. NPNF II/14, citing 1 Timothy 3:6).
Military and civil obligations. A man may not hold both the priesthood and a state office or military command. Apostolic Canon 83: “If a bishop, presbyter, or deacon, shall serve in the army, and wishes to retain both the Roman magistracy and the priestly office, let him be deposed; for the things of Cæsar belong to Cæsar, and those of God to God” (Apostolic Canon 83; trans. NPNF II/14). The principle — that orders are incompatible with secular command — also underlies the prohibition of clergy taking up worldly business (below).

To these the tradition adds further impediments treated elsewhere: a second marriage before ordination bars a man from orders (Apostolic Canon 17), and the marriage discipline governing candidates and clergy is treated in the parallel file on marriage and divorce law.

Ordination Per Saltum and the Sequence of Grades

A candidate must pass through the grades of ministry in order; he may not be ordained “by a leap” (per saltum) directly to a higher grade without having held the lower ones. The Council of Sardica (343) legislated against the practice precisely for prominent or wealthy candidates: a man desired for the episcopate “should be ordained only after fulfilling the ministry of reader, deacon, and presbyter, in order that, passing by promotion through the several grades, he may advance to the height of the episcopate” (Sardica, Canon 10; trans. NPNF II/14). The graded ages of Trullo 14–15 presuppose the same orderly progression. The point is formative, not merely procedural: each grade is a probation for the next.

The Ban on Absolute Ordination

No one may be ordained “at large,” without assignment to a specific church. The Council of Chalcedon (451), Canon 6, forbids the so-called absolute ordination: “No one … is to be ordained without title, unless the one ordained is specially assigned to a city or village church or to a martyr’s shrine or a monastery.” The canon goes further than mere prohibition, declaring such ordinations void: “The sacred synod decreed that the ordination of those ordained without title is null, and that they cannot operate anywhere, because of the presumption of the one who ordained them” (Chalcedon, Canon 6; trans. NPNF II/14). The candidate’s ordination is bound to a community; a priest exists for a particular altar, not as a free-floating sacramental functionary. This canon remains the canonical bar against clerical vagrancy.

Simony

The purchase or sale of ordination — simony, named for Simon Magus (Acts 8:18–20) — is among the gravest canonical offenses, depriving both the buyer and the ordaining bishop of their rank. Apostolic Canon 29: “If any bishop, presbyter, or deacon, shall obtain possession of that dignity by money, let both him and the person who ordained him be deposed, and also altogether cut off from all communion, as Simon Magus was by me Peter” (Apostolic Canon 29; trans. NPNF II/14). Chalcedon, Canon 2, extends the condemnation comprehensively to “ordaining for money” — bishops, presbyters, deacons, stewards, and “any other of those who are counted among the clergy” — ruling that whoever “puts to sale a grace which cannot be sold” forfeits his own rank (Chalcedon, Canon 2; trans. NPNF II/14). Later patriarchal canons reinforce the same — the encyclical of Gennadius of Constantinople (d. 471) and the epistle of Tarasius (d. 806) are both directed against simony and are received as canonical (see Sources of Canons).

Clergy Discipline

Deposition and Suspension

Two principal canonical penalties act on clergy. Deposition (kathairesis, Slavonic izverzhenie) is the permanent removal of a cleric from his order: the deposed cleric reverts to the lay state and cannot exercise any priestly function. Deposition is final in the sense that it is never reversed by re-ordination — Apostolic Canon 68 forbids a second ordination outright, so a deposed cleric who is later restored is restored by an act of the competent synod, not ordained anew (see Holy Orders). Suspension (argia, Slavonic zapreshchenie v sluzhenii) is a temporary prohibition from serving, leaving the order intact; it is the disciplinary instrument the bishop most often uses for correctable faults, pending repentance or the resolution of an accusation. Excommunication and anathema are penalties of a different order, falling on laity and clergy alike. The choice among penalties is itself an exercise of the therapeutic principle: the aim is the cleric’s healing and the protection of the flock, not retribution (cf. Trullo, Canon 102; see Pastoral Economy).

The Prohibition of Secular Pursuits

Clergy are to give themselves to the Church and not to worldly business. Apostolic Canon 6: “Let not a bishop, presbyter, or deacon, undertake worldly business; otherwise let him be deposed” (Apostolic Canon 6; trans. NPNF II/14). Apostolic Canon 81 states the reasoning: a bishop or presbyter “must not give himself to the management of public affairs, but devote himself to ecclesiastical business … for no man can serve two masters, according to the Lord’s declaration” (Apostolic Canon 81; trans. NPNF II/14, citing Matthew 6:24).

The discipline reaches a famous concrete case in the tavern canon. The Council in Trullo, Canon 9: “Let no cleric be permitted to keep a public house. For if it be not permitted to enter a tavern, much more is it forbidden to serve others in it and to carry on a trade which is unlawful for him. But if he shall have done any such thing, either let him desist or be deposed” (Council in Trullo, Canon 9; trans. NPNF II/14). Trullo 9 builds on the older Apostolic Canon 54, which already excommunicates a cleric “found eating in a tavern, unless he has been constrained by necessity, on a journey, to lodge in an inn” (Apostolic Canon 54). The two together draw the line: an inn on a journey is necessity; keeping or frequenting a tavern is a trade unbecoming to a cleric.

Moving Between Dioceses: Letters Dimissory

A cleric is ordained for a particular church (Chalcedon 6, above) and is not free to move at will. To serve or transfer to another diocese he requires letters dimissory (Greek apolytikon gramma) from his own bishop, releasing him, and commendatory or canonical letters certifying his good standing. The Apostolic Canons require that “no foreign bishop, presbyter, or deacon, may be received without commendatory letters; and when they are produced let the persons be examined; and if they be preachers of godliness, let them be received” (Apostolic Canon 33; trans. NPNF II/14). A bishop who receives another’s cleric without such letters, or who ordains a cleric belonging to another bishop, violates canonical order — the rule protects each bishop’s authority over his own clergy and prevents the clerical vagrancy that Chalcedon 6 also targets.

The Appeals Structure

Disputes involving clergy follow a graded path through the Church’s synodal structure rather than a single court of first and last resort. Chalcedon, Canon 9, directs that a cleric with a complaint against another “shall first bring his case before his own bishop,” then before the provincial synod, and then, in the canon’s disputed final clause, before “the exarch of the diocese, or … the throne of the imperial city Constantinople.” Whether that last clause grants Constantinople a universal appellate competence or only a regional one is itself contested between the jurisdictions — the dispute, with both-side sourcing, is treated under Church Governance. The structural point that is not contested is the principle of graded appeal: bishop, then provincial synod, then the higher synodal authority — the same conciliar order described under autocephaly and territory.

Clergy Marriage Discipline

The discipline governing clerical marriage — the requirement that marriage precede ordination to the diaconate (Trullo 6), the prohibition of marriage after ordination, the bar on a twice-married candidate (Apostolic Canon 17), and the position of widowed priests — is a body of law in its own right, intersecting both ordination eligibility and the law of marriage. It is treated in the parallel file on marriage and divorce law; the theological frame is set in Holy Orders.

Modern Application

The ancient canons are not administered today by the civil arm but through each autocephalous church’s own spiritual courts and synodal procedures, which translate deposition, suspension, and the rest into a regulated process with investigation, charges, hearing, and right of appeal.

In the Russian Orthodox Church, clergy discipline is governed by the church’s statute (Ustav) and by a dedicated Regulation on Ecclesiastical Courts (adopted by the Bishops’ Council of 2008), which establishes a three-tier system: diocesan courts, the General Church Court, and the Bishops’ Council as the highest instance, with the accused cleric guaranteed notice and a defense, and serious penalties such as deposition reserved to the bishop or synod on the court’s recommendation (Russian Orthodox Church, Polozhenie o tserkovnom sude, 2008). ROCOR, as a self-governing part of the Moscow Patriarchate, operates its own Synod of Bishops as its disciplinary authority (see Church Governance).

In the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (under the Ecumenical Patriarchate), clergy discipline is regulated by the Uniform Regulations Governing the Ecclesiastical Courts, which likewise provides for a Spiritual Court at the level of the Archdiocese with defined offenses, procedures, and penalties up to deposition, and for review by the hierarchy. In both cases the modern regulation is explicitly a procedural elaboration of the same canonical substance — the impediments, the distinction between deposition and suspension, and the graded appeal — that the Apostolic, conciliar, and patristic canons established. The canons remain the law; the regulations are its administration.

References

Apostolic Canons 6, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 29, 33, 54, 68, 81, 83 (The Rudder [Pedalion], trans. D. Cummings; and NPNF II/14)
First Ecumenical Council (Nicaea I, 325), Canons 1, 2 (trans. NPNF II/14)
Council of Sardica (343), Canon 10 (trans. NPNF II/14)
Council of Chalcedon (451), Canons 2, 6, 9 (trans. NPNF II/14)
Council in Trullo (Quinisext Council, 692), Canons 6, 9, 14, 15, 102 (trans. NPNF II/14; Cummings, The Rudder)
Basil the Great, Canonical Epistles (Epistles 188, 199, 217 to Amphilochius), Canons 3, 32, 51 (trans. NPNF II/8)
Gennadius of Constantinople, Encyclical Epistle on Simony; Tarasius of Constantinople, Epistle on Simony (in The Rudder)
The Rudder (Pedalion), compiled by St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and Hieromonk Agapios (first published Leipzig, 1800); English trans. D. Cummings, Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957
The Seven Ecumenical Councils (NPNF II/14), ed. Schaff and Wace
Lewis J. Patsavos, Spiritual Dimensions of the Holy Canons, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2003
Russian Orthodox Church, Regulation on the Ecclesiastical Court of the Russian Orthodox Church (Polozhenie o tserkovnom sude), Bishops’ Council of 2008 (mospat.ru)
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Uniform Regulations Governing the Ecclesiastical Courts (goarch.org)