page_title: Apostolic succession
section_title: Views concerning other churches
hierarchical_section_title: Apostolic succession / Teachings / Catholic Church / Views concerning other churches
caption_attribution_description: English: Pope Leo XIII. Halftone Photomechanical Prints.
context_page_description: Apostolic succession is the method whereby the ministry of the Christian Church is held to be derived from the apostles by a continuous succession, which has usually been associated with a claim that the succession is through a series of bishops. Christians of the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Old Catholic, Anglican, Church of the East, Moravian, and Scandinavian Lutheran traditions maintain that "a bishop cannot have regular or valid orders unless he has been consecrated in this apostolic succession." Each of these groups does not necessarily consider consecration of the other groups as valid.
  This series was seen originally as that of the bishops of a particular see founded by one or more of the apostles. According to historian Justo L. González, apostolic succession is generally understood today as meaning a series of bishops, regardless of see, each consecrated by other bishops, themselves consecrated similarly in a succession going back to the apostles. According to the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, "apostolic succession" means more than a mere transmission of powers.
context_section_description: In the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIII stated in his 1896 bull Apostolicae curae that the Catholic Church believes specifically that Anglican orders were to be considered "absolutely null and utterly void".
  His argument was as follows. First, the ordination rite of Edward VI had removed language of a sacrificial priesthood. Ordinations using this new rite occurred for over a century and, because the restoration of language of "priesthood" a century later in the ordination rite "was introduced too late, as a century had already elapsed since the adoption of the Edwardine Ordinal ... the Hierarchy had become extinct, there remained no power of ordaining." With this extinction of validly ordained bishops in England, "the true Sacrament of Order as instituted by Christ lapsed, and with it the hierarchical succession." As a result, the pope's final judgment was that Anglican ordinations going forward were to be considered "absolutely null and utterly void". Anglican clergy from then on were from then on to be ordained as Catholic priests upon entry into the Catholic Church.
  A reply from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York (1896) was issued to counter Pope Leo's arguments: Saepius officio: Answer of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to the Bull Apostolicae Curae of H. H. Leo XIII. They argued that if the Anglican orders were invalid, then the Roman orders were as well since the Pope based his case on the fact that the Anglican ordinals used did not contain certain essential elements but these were not found in the early Roman rites either. However, Catholics argue, this argument does not consider the sacramental intention involved in validating Holy Orders. In other words, Catholics believe that the ordination rites were reworded so as to invalidate the ordinations because the intention behind the alterations in the rite was a fundamental change in Anglican understanding of the priesthood.
  It is Roman Catholic doctrine that the teaching of Apostolicae curae is a truth to be "held definitively, but are not able to be declared as divinely revealed," as stated in a commentary by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Cardinal Basil Hume explained the conditional character of his ordination of Graham Leonard, former Anglican bishop of the Diocese of London, to the priesthood in the following way: "While firmly restating the judgement of Apostolicae Curae that Anglican ordination is invalid, the Catholic Church takes account of the involvement, in some Anglican episcopal ordinations, of bishops of the Old Catholic Church of the Union of Utrecht who are validly ordained. In particular and probably rare cases the authorities in Rome may judge that there is a 'prudent doubt' concerning the invalidity of priestly ordination received by an individual Anglican minister ordained in this line of succession." At the same time, he stated: "Since the church must be in no doubt of the validity of the sacraments celebrated for the Catholic community, it must ask all who are chosen to exercise the priesthood in the Catholic Church to accept sacramental ordination in order to fulfill their ministry and be integrated into the apostolic succession." Since Apostolicae curae was issued many Anglican jurisdictions have revised their ordinals, bringing them more in line with ordinals of the early Church.
  Timothy Dufort, writing in The Tablet in 1982, attempted to present an ecumenical solution to the problem of how the Catholic Church might accept Anglican orders without needing to formally repudiate Apostolicae curae at all. Dufort argued that by 1969 all Anglican bishops had acquired apostolic succession fully recognized by Rome, since from the 1930s Old Catholic bishops (the validity of whose orders the Vatican has never questioned) have acted as co-consecrators in the ordination of Anglican bishops. This view has not yet been considered formally by the Holy See, but after Anglican Bishop Graham Leonard converted to Roman Catholicism, he was only reordained in 1994 conditionally because of the presence of Old Catholic bishops at his 
caption: Pope Leo XIII rejected Anglican arguments for apostolic succession in his bull Apostolicae curae.
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