[Kolokotronis]

This is a very interesting article in that it demonstrates in a way I hadn't seen before, the Episcopalian, and for all I know, the Anglican notion of "communion". The priests say they have been threatened with disposition for abandoning communion "with the church". In Orthodoxy, communion wouldn't be a description of the relation between a priest and "the church", but rather of that between bishops and other bishops. To the extent that clergy and faithful are unified around their bishop in a diocese, those clergy and faithful are "in communion" with the clergy and faithful in other dioceses where the bishops are in communion with the bishop of the first diocese. Were a similar situation to develop in an Orthodox diocese, unless there were a way for the priest and the bishop to work out a transfer, which likely couldn't happen if the issue was heresy, then a disobedient priest would simply be defrocked I suspect. His only recourse, I suppose, would, in the case of the GOA, be to the Patriarchal Synod.

I appreciate this post because it further fleshes out for me what these men mean when they speak of communion.

[sionnsar]

I appreciate this post because it further fleshes out for me what these men mean when they speak of communion.

You're welcome. I'm still trying to figure it out too. It is different from what our bishop described, which seems rather closer to Orthodoxy.