The blunt Catholic answer is yes. The Orthodox Churches have valid bishops in unbroken apostolic succession, a valid priesthood, a true Eucharist, and all seven sacraments. The Catholic Church does not regard an Orthodox baptism, ordination, or Divine Liturgy as doubtful, defective, or empty. This is not modern politeness — it is settled teaching, and it has practical teeth.

It helps to see the line Rome actually draws. On the near side stand Churches that keep the apostolic episcopate and a true Eucharist — the Orthodox. On the far side stand communities that, having lost that episcopate, do not preserve “the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery” and so, in the Church’s careful phrase, “are not Churches in the proper sense.” The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith places the Orthodox firmly on the near side: they are “true particular Churches,” in which “the Church of Christ is present and operative.”

So what, precisely, is lacking? Not validity — communion. The same document locates the deficiency in this: they “do not accept the Catholic doctrine of the Primacy.” That is why the right word is schism — a breach of communion — and not a heresy that voids the sacraments. The bishops are real bishops; the Eucharist is really the Body and Blood of Christ; the wound is that it is all celebrated apart from the one office Catholics believe Christ set as the visible center of unity.

And here is the proof that Rome means every word. Catholic law permits a Catholic, in genuine need and when no Catholic minister can be reached, to receive Communion, Confession, and Anointing from an Orthodox priest — precisely because those sacraments are valid.1 The Church does not send her children to receive an empty sign; the permission is the proof. In fairness, this is Rome’s own judgment of the Orthodox, not a mutual settlement: many Orthodox would not frame the matter in terms of Latin “validity” at all — the category is foreign to them — and their recognition of Catholic sacraments is itself contested, often extended, where it is extended, only by economia. And one honest caution: valid is not the same as “it makes no difference.” Validity of orders is not the fullness of communion — and in practice the Orthodox themselves will usually, by their own discipline, decline to commune a Catholic.