Do Priests trace their "lineage" to a specific apostle?

[HerCrazierHalf]

Hopefully this isn’t an inappropriate question. One claim I hear about the Catholic Church is that there is an unbroken line of the laying of hands from the apostles through modern day priests and popes.

1. Is this actually a claim made by the Church?
2. If so, do individual priests know from which apostle their holy orders trace back to?

Thanks in advance

 

[BornInMarch]

Every Priest is ordained by a Bishop, every Bishop is chosen by the Pope, and every Pope is elected by the College of Cardinals who were all chosen by the previous Popes.

And so the entire clergy of the Catholic Church traces itself back to Saint Peter, who we believe was given the keys to heaven and earth made the first Pope by Jesus Christ himself.

 

[po18guy]

If you ask your local Ordinary (Bishop/Archbishop), he will tell you from which apostolic line his ordination comes. For example, Timothy and Titus are the genesis of the Pauline line.

 

[Vico]

Hopefully this isn’t an inappropriate question. One claim I hear about the Catholic Church is that there is an unbroken line of the laying of hands from the apostles through modern day priests and popes.

1. Is this actually a claim made by the Church?
2. If so, do individual priests know from which apostle their holy orders trace back to?

Thanks in advance

Lumen Gentium 18 (Vatican II):

This Sacred Council, following closely in the footsteps of the First Vatican Council, with that Council teaches and declares that Jesus Christ, the eternal Shepherd, established His holy Church, having sent forth the apostles as He Himself had been sent by the Father;(136) and He willed that their successors, namely the bishops, should be shepherds in His Church even to the consummation of the world. And in order that the episcopate itself might be one and undivided, He placed Blessed Peter over the other apostles, and instituted in him a permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of faith and communion.(1*)

Catechism

1544 Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the "one mediator between God and men."15 The Christian tradition considers Melchizedek, “priest of God Most High,” as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique “high priest after the order of Melchizedek”;16 "holy, blameless, unstained,"17 "by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified,"18 that is, by the unique sacrifice of the cross.

1548 In the ecclesial service of the ordained minister, it is Christ himself who is present to his Church as Head of his Body, Shepherd of his flock, high priest of the redemptive sacrifice, Teacher of Truth. This is what the Church means by saying that the priest, by virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, acts in persona Christi Capitis: …

1555 "Amongst those various offices which have been exercised in the Church from the earliest times the chief place, according to the witness of tradition, is held by the function of those who, through their appointment to the dignity and responsibility of bishop, and in virtue consequently of the unbroken succession going back to the beginning, are regarded as transmitters of the apostolic line."34

 

[Mary_Ellen]

there is an unbroken line of the laying of hands from the apostles through modern day priests and popes.

Is this actually a claim made by the Church?
If so, do individual priests know from which apostle their holy orders trace back to?

Yes, this is a claim made by the Church. Each bishop is ordained by another bishop, be that the Pope (Bishop of Rome) or not, by the laying on of hands. This series of ordination goes back and back and back to the original bishops - the apostles - and can be traced.

Yes. Every priest is ordained by a bishop so it follows that each priest can follow his apostolic heritage through the bishop who ordained him.

Be at peace.

 

[SKWill]

While Bishops rightfully claim apostolic succession, the records of apostolic lineage are lost to history. Most bishops today can trace their lineage to Pope Benedict XIII (1649-1730; pope 1724-1730), who ordained many, many bishops (at least 139 or 159 bishops depending on the source), and through him back to Scipione Cardinal Rebiba (1504-1577) but we don’t know who ordained Cardinal Rebiba a bishop.

 

[egao_gakari]

I had a similar question when I was becoming Catholic. When I asked my priest, he said that for himself, he didn’t know his apostolic lineage more than a few generations back, but that there were others who cared more about it and knew more. But as somebody else said, somewhere around 500-700 years ago the lineages (other than the Papacy) become pretty misty. My understanding is that a lot of the record-keeping and so forth began around the time of Protestantism. Before then certain things were more free-wheeling.

It wasn’t the world’s most satisfying answer for me. It wound up being one of the things that I chose to take on faith, because of the converging lines of evidence for the truth of the Church in other areas.

 

[Wesrock]

Please note that multiple Bishops can participate in a single ordination, and that any Bishop can ordain another man to Holy Orders, meaning, it’s not like there’s a Paul order of Bishops, and an Andrew order of Bishops, and a Matthew line of Bishops, and so on. So tracing the succession back in one, single, straight line to only one apostle, kind of like following just father to son lists going back generations, isn’t exactly the way to model it.

You do see apostolic succession in Clement’s letter to the Corinthians from the first century and other documents. Perhaps most famous is Irenaeus’ description of it at the end of the second century.

 

[SKWill]

The Introduction to the 1968 Rite of Ordination of a Bishop implies all assisting bishops are also ordaining the new bishop:

1. The principal consecrator must be assisted by at least two other consecrating bishops, but it is fitting for all the bishops present together with the principal consecrator to ordain the bishop-elect.

That being said, it appears to me that only the Principal Consecrator “counts” for purposes of tracing episcopal lineage (see Pope Francis’ lineage for an example.) Records are kept of Principal Consecrators and Principal Co-Consecrators, but the Principal Co-Consecrators and the other bishops in attendance who also lay hands on the ordinand aren’t considered part of the lineage.

 

[midori]

There’s a good website called Catholic-Hierarchy.org, which show the lineages of each of the current bishops. So you if you know which bishop ordained a particular priest, you can check the roots of that particular bishop’s lineage.

In practice, a big chunk of them (95%!!!) terminate with Cardinal Rebiba (b. 1504-d. 1577). If people could figure out Cardinal Rebiba’s lineage, you’d be able to go much further back in time. Pope Benedict XIII (aka Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini) was episcopally descended from Rebiba, and he himself consecrated at least 139 bishops.

Today, more than 95% of the New World’s and more than 5,200 Catholic bishops alive today, including Pope Francis,[21] trace their episcopal lineage back to Rebiba.[22] However, no one is sure who consecrated him because no supporting documentation has been found. It has been speculated the records pertaining to his episcopal consecration and those immediately preceding him in office were destroyed in a fire in Chieti, the village north of Rome where Rebiba first became Auxiliary Bishop.[23] Therefore, “it simply means that the details of that bishop’s episcopal ordination have not yet been found and that the bishop in question is the last known bishop in that lineage.”

The last non-Rebiban Pope was Pope Innocent XII (aka Antonio Pignatelli del Rastrello) who was elected Pope in 1691. His lineage is traced to Guillaume Cardinal d’Estouteville (b. 1403- d. 1483). But the last 24 (?) Popes have been descended from Rebiba.

 

[ChadS]

I’m glad to see a thread like this being discussed. As a Catholic I believe that our faith is Apostolic and traces back in an unbroken line to the Apostles. However, that is a far cry from saying that we have the paperwork to prove or demonstrate that conclusively. I’ve looked at the Catholic-hierarchy.org website before and the person who does the research often seems to be doing it for Church officials and bishops, so this isn’t a fly by night organization. I’ve also heard the 95% figure used before and see no reason to doubt it. The other 5% lineages are most likely from other Eastern churches or are from newer episcopal lines.

If we are tempted to think that a “fake” bishop may have slipped through the cracks somehow and attempted ordination back during the Middle Ages or earlier I wouldn’t worry about it. The practice of having multiple bishops do the consecrating ensures that it is properly carried out and that seems to have been the practice from early on. By the early-Middle Ages there were so few bishops that each one was known and also the consecrations were carried out by local bishops for the local community that a fake would have a difficult time gaining traction. At this point in time I don’t know of any who would’ve been able to carry on such a deception for a long period of time.

ChadS

 

[HerCrazierHalf]

OP here. Well this had been very informative. My original line of thought was that there were possibly lines leading back to various apostles (and of course St Peter).

I actually didn’t expect a detailed lineage since there’s been times where belonging to the “wrong” faith/denomination included a real risk of death.

Thanks.