I have been thinking a lot recently about apostolic succession . I deliberately don’t want to talk about the reasons, because it is important to me for my reflections not to be seen as a personal attack on anyone or an attempt to question that any particular person “has” the apostolic succession. I would rather like to receive substantive reactions to my thoughts, which are not more than a few remarks, and which I have purposefully not supported by references to literature in order not to make them too hermetic. Moreover, I realize that this text contains many simplifications. My goal is however to draw a sketch and not the entire picture of the problem.
Two approaches
Virtually every Christian church underlines that it is the bearer/heir of the legacy of the apostles. For Protestants this means in the first place (even if not only) the legacy of their teaching , while churches of the broadly conceived Catholic tradition link the succession of teaching/doctrine to the succession of office. This classification does not converge completely with denominational borders, because there are many Protestant churches that preserved also the succession of office (an example is the Church of Sweden).
The Catholic approach seems to me in the first place to be more complete. De facto it contains also the Protestant concern, namely preserving from generation to generation the teaching in the spirit of the Gospel passed by Jesus Christ to the apostles (we should immediately say that “preservation” doesn’t mean a thoughtless repetition, but contains also an element of critical reflection). No proponent of the succession of office claims that the fact that the bishop of his church can demonstrate a legitimate “pedigree” can replace even in the least degree participation in the faith of the church of all ages, whose symbolic expression are the ancient creeds. We could say thus that the classical Protestant approach is contained in the Catholic one, but the Catholic tradition has more to say about apostolic succession. The point is above all that faith is inseparable from people who profess it. Faith is not what was written in the Creed or the “symbolical books” of the Reformation. It is in the first place existential and in its essence lies an encounter with the mystery. So the act of ordination has not only, and even not in the first place, the meaning of conferring the right to proclaim one or another teaching. It is above all an act of introduction into a mystery, whose apex is the Eucharistic celebration. As a Christian considering myself to be a part of the broadly understood Catholic tradition, I would like to tell those my sisters and brothers from the Protestant churches for whom apostolic succession is in the first place or exclusively a succession of teaching: you are of course right to stress the significance of the apostolic teaching, but in my opinion your approach can lead to a narrowed understanding of faith as approving or not approving of certain doctrines. Personally I need more than just that – I need an act of introduction into the “great mystery of faith”, which is something more than just an intellectual or legal act. For me it is in the first place a manifestation of Christian mystagogy .
“Transmission belt”
Now arises the fundamental question. Are only ordained clergy the bearers of apostolic tradition introduced into the mystery of faith? We all have to answer in the negative. It is obvious that not only clergy participate in the mystery. The fundamental and essential act of introduction into it is simply baptism. An expression of this conviction is baptismal ecclesiology characteristic for the Episcopal Church, which accentuates the fullness of rights and obligations of every baptized person. It is the community of the baptized – being the “royal priesthood” – that is the bearer of apostolic tradition, its successor. In Western Catholicism such great thinkers as the Spaniard El Tostado or the Flemish representative of “Ecclesiological Jansenism” van Espen reminded about this (which doesn’t mean that their views didn’t differ). It is the community that chooses its particular members to ordained ministry, investing them with rights and duties which in principle belong to it as a whole. It can be put shortest in one sentence: there is no bishop without the church… We should add that this principle cannot be reversed. I’m reminded here of the question I asked of the Old Catholic archbishop of Utrecht, Joris Vercammen: if he thought that the church can exist without hierarchy. What I had in mind was of course a community like for example a base community where I minister as a pastor. I remembered his answer very well. He said: if the hierarchy becomes perverted, the community has the right to continue without it. From the point of view of the episcopal model of the church, it is certainly not the optimal situation, but it may arise in certain circumstances. So even the most convinced proponent of the continuity of the ministry of deacons/priests/bishops should never claim that the lack of this ministry in a form recognizable to us makes a church cease to be a church. In the same spirit we can, and in my opinion we should, interpret the Lambeth Quadrilateral , which mentions historic episcopate, but immediately adds also “locally adapted”, which means that ordained ministry may take forms far remote from those we know.
Valid or invalid?
If we accept that not only clergy is the “transmission belt” of apostolic succession, but the whole church, we consequently have to ask about the validity of apostolic succession of those ministers/bishops who act outside of the community or minister to a more or less transitory group of their personal “fans” they call a church. Many of them have impeccable “pedigrees”, for it is really not a problem to find a bishop willing to ordain someone. Personally I’m surprised by the ease with which many Catholics consider such ordinations to be “valid”. And they in turn are surprised that I, being often labeled a “liberal”, demonstrate great reluctance in this matter. Some see it as an expression of an unecumenical attitude or looking down on other communities. The point is something else, however. When I see that a given group smoothly changes everything: its name, membership, teachings, etc., and only the leader, ordained to subsequent orders, stays, it’s difficult for me to assume that such a community considers itself seriously to be the bearer of apostolic succession. It seems rather that the leader considers himself to be the bearer, and the group of people gathered around him is only his – more or less random – entourage. In my eyes such a priest remains a “priest” (and the quotation marks are supposed to be very meaningful!), even if the bishop of Rome, the ecumenical patriarch and the archbishop of Canterbury or Utrecht laid their hands on him. This doesn’t matter at all, because his ministry is not really rooted in an existing community!
Polish specificity
In Poland we have unfortunately to do with a lack of good ecclesiological reflection. As a theologian from the Polish Catholic Church (whose mother church is the PNCC) told me once, the fundamental problem in Polish Old Catholicism was the validity of orders and not a reflection on what the church actually is. The question is how these two matters can be separated… For separating them, we treat ordination as a magical act involving only the consecrator and the consecrated one. So we have to do with a situation where someone receives from someone else a certain magical power and prerogatives to use it before an “audience” consisting mostly of their “kith and kin”. This means turning the matter upside down. We can actually hardly be surprised that many reject the idea of apostolic succession when confronted with such an approach and treat it as an incomprehensible construct of theologians used in the first place to satisfy personal ambitions, while of course the principle is totally different. In the word “hierarchy” one can hear the Greek word “arche” which means both the beginning and leading principle. The hierarchy ought to remind us of our common beginnings, which are also the essence of our calling today. The point is that the church recognizes itself in its bishop, seeing his ministry as a personal actualization of the calling that concerns us all, whose source is the fact that “The Lord stood once at the shore, looking for people ready to follow him and fish for hearts of God’s servants with truth”… (From the hymn “Follow me.”)
