rakovsky
Toumarches
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In layman's terms, one can not make the OCU's clerics to be "canonical" using common sense like you are trying to do in your question. To put it dryly, it seems that you would have to go on CP Bartholomew's decisions as your basis for thinking that the OCU's clergy carried canonical ordination.One thing I haven’t seen addressed, at least not often, in regards to the current EP-MP schism are the actual clerics of the OCU themselves.
Most people seem to focus on the EP invading the canonical territory of the MP
What I’m more curious about is the actual validity of the clerics of the OCU and whether or not they are actually legitimately ordained. Also, whether or not the EP has the authority to…with the swipe of a pen…able to regularize clergy who had been formally anathematized by another autocephalous Church.
If the OCU clerics are indeed schismatic, the concelebration of the Alexandrian/Greek/Cypriot/Constantinople hierarchs with them makes them schismatic as well. If the OCU is not currently schismatic and the EP did have the right to do what he did, then that changes thing.
Can someone explain this to me in layman’s
To be more specific and technical, consider the following events:
1. The MP defrocked KP Filaret in 1992 and the CP wrote that they accepted the MP's decision.
2. KP Filaret ordained/consecrated clergy of the UOC-KP.
3. CP Bartholomew reinstated Filaret in October 2018. AFAIK, CP Bartholomew did NOT specifically reinstate the other UOC-KP clergy at that point. CP Bartholomew ALSO announced at about this time that he was retaking jurisdiction over Ukraine for the CP from the MP.
4. KP FIlaret and others in the UOC-KP formed the OCU.
5. CP Bartholomew recognized the OCU as the only legitimate "Church" in Ukraine in Jan. 2019.
6. KP Filaret and some other clergy left the OCU to start a small break away church.
7. The OCU declared that KP Filaret was no longer part of the OCU and that all consecrations performed by KP Filaret were invalid (and I take it that they meant this retroactively). KP's Filaret's UOC-KP breakaway church, in commenting on this decision, gave a press release noting that the OCU "primate" himself was consecrated by KP Filaret.
So in conclusion, it's hard to try to get the OCU's ordinations to make sense in the way that you are asking about. KP Filaret imposed the consecrations at a time when both the MP and CP agreed that KP Filaret was defrocked. Then the KP decided that the OCU was canonical, so it implies that the CP was indirectly validating the OCU hierarch's own consecrations. But then the OCU announced that all consecrations by KP Filaret were invalid, and they didn't draw an exception for consecrations made by KP Filaret on OCU clergy.
I guess if you want to consider the OCU clergy to be canonical, then you could say that their canonicity started in January 2019 on the theory that the CP somehow had jurisdiction in Ukraine, and then you could interpret their decision invalidating KP Filaret's consecrations to not apply to them somehow.
In conclusion, you need to decide whether CP Bartholomew had jurisdiction in Ukraine sufficient for him to declare the OCU canonical along with its clergy, and you need to decide if the OCU in effect revoked their own consecrations when they said that they revoked the consecrations performed by KP Filaret.