apostolic succession

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Is there an online resource which can be used to trace the apostolic succession of a sitting Catholic Bishop to one of the twelve Apostles of Christ?

If not, exactly where and how is the succession of bishops documented or otherwise established?

maggie
 
magdalina said:
Is there an online resource which can be used to trace the apostolic succession of a sitting Catholic Bishop to one of the twelve Apostles of Christ?

If not, exactly where and how is the succession of bishops documented or otherwise established?

maggie
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There is no such site, and to my knowledge no such records exist. We don’t have a whole lot of reliable documentation from, like, the 500s and 600s AD.
 
MarkThompson said:
There is no such site, and to my knowledge no such records exist. We don’t have a whole lot of reliable documentation from, like, the 500s and 600s AD.
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Surely you jest! Two hundred years after the Nicene Creed was put forward the essential profession of the Christian faith, the Catholic Church abandoned one of the “four marks of the church”? Does this seem odd to to anyone else?

Has Orthodoxy taken the matter any more seriously? Anglicans? Lutherans?
 
MarkThompson said:
There is no such site, and to my knowledge no such records exist. We don’t have a whole lot of reliable documentation from, like, the 500s and 600s AD.
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No, this is incorrect, there is likely enough a site out there somewhere, save that of course, the Church moves slowly into the Internet age.
 
MarkThompson said:
There is no such site, and to my knowledge no such records exist. We don’t have a whole lot of reliable documentation from, like, the 500s and 600s AD.
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i came across a link to this kind of site before in another post. I did not save it though.

Well, for one, we have a list of popes from Peter to today…
 
Like Mark, I doubt there is such a thing. I know that whenever one is ordained, the name of the person or persons who ordain are listed somewhere. I think its reflected on one’s baptismal record, or in a certificate by itself. But there isn’t really a site that links the succession. But given there is a record, I think its possible to make the trace, but not all the way back to the Apostles. I doubt they made such record keeping back in the day. But I bet it will take a huge amount of work just to gather all available documents and then link it from one person to the next.
 
magdalina said:
Surely you jest! Two hundred years after the Nicene Creed was put forward the essential profession of the Christian faith, the Catholic Church abandoned one of the “four marks of the church”? Does this seem odd to to anyone else?

Has Orthodoxy taken the matter any more seriously? Anglicans? Lutherans?
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Shin said:
No, this is incorrect, there is likely enough a site out there somewhere, save that of course, the Church moves slowly into the Internet age.
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What, something has to have been recorded, and the records preserved for fifteen centuries, to be true? Next thing you know, maybe I’ll tell you we don’t have Pope St. Cletus’ baptismal certificate! Oh no! Does that mean the Church is saying he wasn’t really Catholic?! (Ah, maybe it just hasn’t been digitized yet. Whew, no worries; the Church moves slowly into the Internet age.)
 
Shin said:
Here’s the complete list of popes from the Catholic Encyclopedia.

If you look at patriarchal sees and historically important dioceses you may find some similar lists of the successive office holders.

As for something more detailed here’s one website.
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Right. We generally have accounts of who held most bishoprics, although in some cases the entries are semi-legendary. But for every see? Heck, older accounts often list a “Pope St. Anacletus” (or Anencletus) in there after Linus and before (or maybe after) Cletus. The old Catholic Encyclopedia remarks:
Whether he was the same as Cletus, who is also called Anencletus as well as Anacletus, has been the subject of endless discussion. Irenaeus, Eusebius, Augustine, Optatus, use both names indifferently as of one person. Tertullian omits him altogether. To add to the confusion, the order is different. Thus Irenaeus has Linus, Anacletus, Clement; whereas Augustine and Optatus put Clement before Anacletus.
If we don’t definitive historical evidence of the existence vel non of a Pope, what do you think the chances are that we have convincing records, going back 2000 years, not of the fairly mundane topic of people’s existence, but of the more esoteric topic of who consecrated whom?
 
Friend :),

Please remember that the holy Church was persecuted for nearly three hundred years before its general acceptance by Rome. Less than one generation before Constantine legalised the religion, Diocletian had been murdering Christians. Do you think such a hunted and hounded faith would have the ability to produce written or engraved documents recording the consecration of bishops, let alone individual popes?

So much information about minorities was lost in Communist Russia due to the necessary secrecy of resisting parties. That was only 20+ years ago! If you think a lot of historical material was destroyed by the Reds in the last 80 years, just imagine what the ultra-degenerate and vindictive Roman Empire of the third century might have done to conceal Christianity. Never mind the Christians themselves, who probably had to disguise their language if they ever did write about consecrations.

Quite a good chunk of history is lost when our brothers are intent on murdering each other.
 
Shin said:
No, this is incorrect, there is likely enough a site out there somewhere, save that of course, the Church moves slowly into the Internet age.
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In Hungary there was legally required matriculation for everyone since the reoccupation of the country from the Turks in 1699. My father wanted to get our ancestors. He succeded to go back until 1806, over there no more cue: The church which kept the matriculation was burned down, and with that the documents too.

Usually there are realable records of the bishop’s ordination back to the Tridentine times. Imagine. There was just one handwritten record in every Cathedral. A bomb in WWII, and the record is gone. In Hungary the Turks devastated them, in England and Prussia the reformation, in Frech the Revolution, in Span the Moors and the Reconquista, in Italy the incessant wars.

Naturally the falsifying business is inventuous.
 
But given there is a record, I think its possible to make the trace, but not all the way back to the Apostles. I doubt they made such record keeping back in the day. But I bet it will take a huge amount of work just to gather all available documents and then link it from one person to the next.
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So you’re saying it’s possible that somewhere in the early centuries this apostolic (and episcopal) succession was broken and no one knew about it? I don’t think it would take too much effort to disprove that theory.
 
ProVobis said:
So you’re saying it’s possible that somewhere in the early centuries this apostolic (and episcopal) succession was broken and no one knew about it? I don’t think it would take too much effort to disprove that theory.
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The conservation of the record is different from the fact itself. We can safely suppose that the majority of the bishop was validly ordained from the beginning. Certainly there were individual cases with invalid ordination, and forward succession. This is when the ‘Ecclesia supplet’ principle comes into the picture.
 
The conservation of the record is different from the fact itself.
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I don’t dispute that. But the poster stated “Given there is a record…”

Maybe I should have asked instead “Are you saying that it’s possible some conspiracy might have suppressed these records altogether and inserted its own complete succession, including the members of the “Ecclesia” in the principle mentioned?”
 
ProVobis said:
I don’t dispute that. But the poster stated “Given there is a record…”

Maybe I should have asked instead “Are you saying that it’s possible some conspiracy might have suppressed these records altogether and inserted its own complete succession, including the members of the “Ecclesia” in the principle mentioned?”
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There are records today. But to say that it can be traced all the way back to the Apostles is a stretch because of the fact that record keeping hasn’t always been there throughout history. Why read more into what I have posted?
 
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