BTW, Did you say that you belong to the ONE, Holy , Catholic and Apostolic Church? Obviously you don't, because the Orthodox Church does not speak with ONE teaching with regard to the validity of the Catholic Eucharist, among other things.
Indeed. Is it not a wonderful testament to enduring love that even though the Church of the West separated from us 1000 years ago there are still Orthodox who are reluctant to deny that there is grace in Catholic Sacraments?
The question boils down to - do bishops exist outside the Church and out of communion with the Church?. I believe that the episcopate -the College of the Apostles- cannot exist outside the Church. Without the episcopate there can be no Sacraments. Do you know the writings of Fr Justin Popovich? - I tend to be a follower of his.
Now, I know that this is a harsh saying for a Roman Catholic to hear (about as harsh as when the Anglicans are told much the same about the invalidity of their Orders by Catholics.)
BUT, on the other hand, we have to be honest and tell you that you will find Orthodox who accept the "validity" of the Roman Catholic episcopate and the Sacraments which flow from it. Saint Philaret Metropolitan of Moscow is of this opinion. Here are his words
http://www.orthodoxchristianity.net/forum/index.php/topic,13419.msg185558.html#msg185558In fact for the last 400 years the Church of Russia has accepted the validity of Roman Catholic sacraments.
BUT... ... on the other hand we find that in the 1980s at one of the Meetings of the Catholic-Orthodox International Theological Dialogue that the Orthodox bishops and theologians (including the Russian delegates) refused to recognise Catholic baptism per se. A rejection of Catholic baptism obviously entails a fundamental rejection of all other Catholic Sacraments.
How do we deal with this dichotomy? - some say Catholics have sacraments, some say they do not. I suppose the best we can say it that the Orthodox do not know if Catholics have sacraments. We could look at this little anecdote about Anglican baptism to get a handle on this Orthodox agnosticism......
There is an incident in the UK recorded by the Archbishop of Canterbury himself
(Lord Runcie if I remember) in an issue of "Eastern Churches Quarterly."
At a meeting in England of Anglican and Russian Orthodox bishops, the Anglicans
asked at supper: "Do you believe we are baptized?" The Orthodox asked to have
the night to think about it. At breakfast in the morning the Anglicans asked: "So,
what do you think? Are we baptized?"
The Orthodox replied, "We do not know."