Orthodox clergy divide structurally into two paths commonly called white clergy, married parish priests and deacons who form the great majority of ordinary parish ministry and who must marry, if at all, before ordination rather than after, and black clergy, monastics, including hieromonks, archimandrites and bishops, bound to celibacy and, in principle, to a monastery's community life even where their actual assignment is administrative or pastoral rather than contemplative. This division, rooted in the same early church practice that shaped Catholic clerical celibacy but resolved differently, married clergy permitted for parish priests and deacons rather than barred outright, has structured Orthodox church life for well over a millennium and remains firmly in place across all Orthodox churches today.
The practical consequence is that the two paths lead to different ceilings: white clergy may rise to senior parish and diocesan administrative roles and honorific titles such as archpriest, but the episcopate itself, and with it the churches' highest governing offices, patriarch, metropolitan and diocesan bishop among them, remains open only to black clergy. A widowed or otherwise unmarried priest wishing to be considered for the episcopate must formally take monastic vows first, a real if relatively uncommon route by which the two paths occasionally cross.