Deposition or resignation if a bishop leaves the Church?

[Christophoros]

Suppose an Orthodox bishop, of his own free will, places himself under the jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome, or any other non-Orthodox primate. Would this bishop have to be deprived of his episcopacy by deposition from a competent Synod of Bishops, or would he automatically be removed from office by virtue of leaving the Church (a sort of tacit resignation, since someone outside the Church cannot hold an office within the Church), and thus the Church would simply have to formally declare it as a done deed?

[Paul Cowan]

Christopher:
Do you have a specific Bishop you are talking about? I doubt very seriously any priest that attains the rank of Bishop would change allegiances to his faith.

[Kosta]

As far as administrative procedures a clergy member can best answer such question. But if a bishop severs with the church to join a heterodox organization he is an apostate and becomes devoid of grace.

Apostolic succession is apostolic succession only as long as the bishop remains Orthodox. There is no episcopal office apart from the Church. There is only a falling away from the Church. Once a bishop seperates himself from the one holy catholic and apostolic church to join the uniates (or whatever heterodox group), he simply becomes a heretical layman in a cassock.

[Christophoros]

Christopher:
Do you have a specific Bishop you are talking about? I doubt very seriously any priest that attains the rank of Bishop would change allegiances to his faith.


I have no particular bishop in mind, but this situation has occurred numerous times in the past, especially in the case of the Uniates.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Christopher, you wrote:


Suppose an Orthodox bishop, of his own free will, places himself under the jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome, or any other non-Orthodox primate. Would this bishop have to be deprived of his episcopacy by deposition from a competent Synod of Bishops, or would he automatically be removed from office by virtue of leaving the Church (a sort of tacit resignation, since someone outside the Church cannot hold an office within the Church), and thus the Church would simply have to formally declare it as a done deed?

Having glanced through a few volumes on the canons, I cannot find anything that expressly addresses this context. However, as others in the thread have hinted, there is in some sense no need to depose one who has left the Church. Clerical orders, of whatever rank, from reader to patriarch, are orders within the Church, and outside its borders simply have no bearing. To be a cleric is not, as it were, an ontological transmutation of a person into some new stature, but to be called to an office within the Church for which God provides grace and charism for fulfilment of that office, in the Church. If one leaves the Church, the office is simply no more.

That said, the normal custom would, in fact, be for the local synod (that is, the synod of the Church that the bishop or other cleric left) to issue some sort of statement making clear to the faithful what had happened. But such a proclamation is simply that; it is not that which 'deposes' one who has left the Church, who, rather like the second son in the parable who leaves his father's house and refuses to partake of the feast, deposes himself.

INXC, Matthew