Apostolic Succession

[holly3278]

Hi everyone. I am a former Catholic. Some Catholics have told me that the Episcopalians do not have valid apostolic succession. I obviously do not believe this to be true because I want to become Episcopalian. However, I do not know how to defend the Episcopal Church's apostolic succession. How do I go about briefly defending it? This is an issue that I just totally don't understand. I really don't even understand why the Catholic Church believes the Episcopalians to not have valid apostolic succession so if somebody could explain that to me briefly as well, I'd greatly appreciate it.

[srigdon]

I don't know a whole lot about this, although certainly I've heard a lot about it over the years. It seems at though Rome claims that because we broke away, abolished some Roman theology and changed ordination rites, we don't have apostolic succession. Basically, because we haven't done everything the way they say we're supposed to do it, we don't have our succession.

All sorts of rites have been changed over the years by all churches, so I really have no idea why the exact nature of the ordination rite matters. It sounds to me like Rome just wants people to think they're losing some blessing of the Holy Spirit by not being ministered to by their priests and bishops.

If you really want to defend our apostolic succession, you might ask people what they think 'valid' apostolic succession is. Is it just an unbroken line of bishops back to Peter? Or is it a line of bishops who tow the line of Rome? We can trace our succession of bishops back to St. Peter just like everybody else. The first Anglican bishops were English Roman Catholics who simply left the Roman Church.

[Canadian Phil]

srigdon is definately right here on the Apostolic Succession. Roman Catholics will argue that the breakway (i.e. schism) of the English Church and the adoption of many Protestant theological positions constitutes a breach of the Apostolic Succession traced through Rome as the great Apostolic see in the West. This depends on the identification of apostlic succession as being the succession of bishops in person to an apostle (here, St. Peter). This has a point in the sense that the early Church did trace apostolic succession this way, although it ignores the occasionally very embaressing breaks even in the Roman church.

The Anglican understanding tends to stress that we are living up to the teaching of apostles. This would seem more important that a kind of spiritual geneology.

Peace,
Phil

[holly3278]

I am just curious, do the Eastern Orthodox or other rites have different rites of ordination than Roman Catholics? If so, how can Rome possibly claim that Anglican/Episcopalian ordination rites are invalid?

[Swick]

For purposes of what it considers "valid" ordination, Rome has two criteria: form and intent. I believe that when the question of the validity of Anglican Orders was raised a few hundred years ago, Rome initially said that the form, the words, used for ordination weren't proper. It was then shown that the form used was basically an English translation of a Latin form used by the Roman Catholic Church. Rome then said that although the form might have been proper, there was no intent to ordain a sacrificial priesthood, which from my reading of history, is correct.

[angli_fan]

You may find the following links to be of interest:

Wikipedia's article on Apostolic Succession:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostolic_Succession

An entry from the blog of a Roman Catholic layperson, explaining why we episcopalians really don't have valid orders:
www.bringyou.to/apologetics/a34.htm

Fr. Tobias Haller's [Episcopal] observations on last year's reaffirmation of the Apostolicae Curae by the Pope:
jintoku.blogspot.com/2007/07/corrective-lenses.html

and The Rev. David Simmons [Episcopal] tackles the whole question of "Holy Orders and Apostolic Succession" at his Ask The Priest website:
www.askthepriest.org/askthepriest/2007/11/holy-orders-and.html

Pax;

angli_fan

[holly3278]

swick said:

For purposes of what it considers "valid" ordination, Rome has two criteria: form and intent. I believe that when the question of the validity of Anglican Orders was raised a few hundred years ago, Rome initially said that the form, the words, used for ordination weren't proper. It was then shown that the form used was basically an English translation of a Latin form used by the Roman Catholic Church. Rome then said that although the form might have been proper, there was no intent to ordain a sacrificial priesthood, which from my reading of history, is correct.

So then we wouldn't have valid apostolic succession if they really did not have the intent to ordain a sacrificial priesthood right?

[Swick]

In Rome's understanding, yes. While Roman Catholics often refer to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, mainstream Anglicans would very rarely use this terminology, since it implies that some sort of actual sacrifice is going on, which in actual Roman Catholic theology is not correct--in the Mass people are participating in Christ's one sacrifice of himself on the cross, which is what most Anglicans probably believe-there is no "re-sacrificing" going on, which is why Anglicans typically avoid this type of language. We do talk about "our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving," but this not the same as Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

[holly3278]

swick said:

In Rome's understanding, yes. While Roman Catholics often refer to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, mainstream Anglicans would very rarely use this terminology, since it implies that some sort of actual sacrifice is going on, which in actual Roman Catholic theology is not correct--in the Mass people are participating in Christ's one sacrifice of himself on the cross, which is what most Anglicans probably believe-there is no "re-sacrificing" going on, which is why Anglicans typically avoid this type of language. We do talk about "our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving," but this not the same as Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

Oh ok. I understand now. Thanks!

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