Objection & response

Can laypeople judge bishops?

Whether the discernment and withdrawal Canon 15 protects belongs also to the laity, and where lay judgment ends.

The objection, at its strongest

Judgment of bishops belongs to synods of bishops. For a layman to weigh his hierarch's teaching and act on his own verdict is private judgment usurping the Church's courts, Protestantism in Orthodox dress.

Why it is raised

The canons do in fact reserve the trial and deposition of bishops to synods; the dangers of individual self appointed judges are real; and humility before the hierarchy is a genuine Orthodox instinct.

Evidence for the objection

The canonical order reserves accusations against and trials of bishops to episcopal synods, not to individuals.
History shows real damage from self appointed judges multiplying separations over imagined heresies.
St Ignatius binds the faithful tightly to the bishop: “Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop.”

Evidence against it

The Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (1848) states that among the Orthodox “the protector of religion is the very body of the Church, even the people themselves”, the laity are guardians of the faith, not spectators.
Canon 15 protects “those who separate” without restricting the class to clergy; the withdrawal it honours presupposes that the one withdrawing has recognised the openly preached, already condemned heresy.
History agrees: the union of Florence was signed by hierarchs and overturned in large part by the refusal of the faithful; during Iconoclasm and Arianism the people often preserved what many bishops surrendered.
The distinction that resolves the tension: recognising a condemned heresy when it is preached openly is discernment, which every baptised Christian owes; deposing the man who preaches it is judgment, which belongs to the synod alone.

A limited conclusion

Strongly supported

The laity can and must discern openly preached, already condemned heresy, the 1848 Encyclical makes them guardians of the faith, and Canon 15's protection of withdrawal extends to them. What no layman (and no monk or priest) can do is what only a synod can: try, judge, and depose the bishop, or declare his Mysteries void. Discernment and withdrawal, yes; deposition and a rival altar, no.