SPIRITUAL RELATIONSHIP

SPIRITUAL RELATIONSHIP. These are the bonds entered into as the result of sacramental actions such as baptism (q.v.), adoption, or monastic tonsure. The godparent, in the first instance, involves both himself (or herself) and his relations in a spiritual relationship with the kin of the baptized. The same limitations on marriage within specified degrees of consanguinity were and are thus applied in the Orthodox Church to all who are connected by godparenthood. The language of spiritual relationship came also to be often applied to the bonds obtaining between the monk’s elder or abbot and himself. (See Spiritual Father.) It is sometimes applied, though not always properly, to the relationship between the Christian and his or her confessor.