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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
What light might a greater attentiveness to the role of the Holy Spirit radiate over the tangled question of apostolic succession and the validity of orders? Here I have in mind the question of orders in the Protestant communities, as understood from a Roman Catholic perspective, although the question is relevant to some of the Eastern Orthodox and other Eastern Christian churches as well. For although it is commonly held, given the teaching of Vatican II (Unitatis Redintegratio, Decree on Ecumenism, no. 15) and later papal teaching (John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 50), that Catholics recognize the validity of orders of the Orthodox, the recognition is not always mutual.
The typical Roman Catholic view of the “Protestant question,” if I may abbreviate it in this way, is that an unbridgeable break—a radical disruption—occurred at the Reformation in both the form and the matter of apostolic succession. That is, the teaching (or doctrine) about orders, as well as the concrete, institutionalized forms of its presence in the threefold diaconate-priesthood-episcopacy, were fatally disrupted at the Reformation. Apostolic succession was thereby fatally flawed, at least as regards ordained ministry. And this fatal flaw was in turn reflected in the liturgical rites and larger ecclesial institutional forms of the Protestant communities.
1 See his Commentary on Ephesians, at 4:11, for example: “For God adorned His Church with apostles, evangelists and prophets, only for a time, except that, where religion has broken down, He raises up evangelists apart from Church order (extra or-dinem), to restore the pure doctrine to its lost position. But without pastors and doctors there can be no government of the church” (Calvin's New Testament Commentaries, vol. 11, trans. Parker, T.H.L. [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1965], 180).Google Scholar
2 Documents of the Christian Church, ed. Bettenson, Henry and Manunder, Chris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 434–35.Google Scholar
3 Paul, John II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, ed. Messori, Vittorio, trans. McPhee, Jenny and McPhee, Martha (New York: Knopf, 1994), 153.Google Scholar See Ut Unum Sint, no. 85.
4 See the Declaration in The Pope Speaks 40 (1995): 114–16.
5 Documents of the Christian Church, 435.