Apostolic Succession

The unbroken handing on of the apostolic ministry by the laying on of hands, bishop from bishop, from the Apostles to the present. Orthodoxy does not treat it as a mechanical pedigree: succession in the office is inseparable from succession in the faith, and a bishop who abandons the apostolic teaching is not held together with the Church by the validity of his consecration. So the succession that matters is of ordination and confession at once, which is why the Church has deposed bishops whose orders nobody doubted.