Canon 408

1. Lay persons who excel in the necessary knowledge, experience

and integrity, should be heard as experts or consultors by ecclesiastical authorities, whether individually or as members of various councils and assemblies, whether parochial, eparchial or

patriarchal. 2. Besides those ecclesiastical functions to

which lay persons are by common law admitted, they may be also

admitted by a competent authority to other functions, excepting

those which require holy orders or which are expressly forbidden

to lay persons by the particular law of their own Church. 3.

Lay persons are fully subject to ecclesiastical authority in respect to the exercise of ecclesiastical functions.