Lutheran Apostolic Succession?

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Stylteralmaldo

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I’ve heard the claim that some branches of the Lutheran Church claim to have retained the Apostolic Succession (my understanding is that it might still exist in Sweden and Finland). Is this true? Does the Vatican recognize this succession as valid?

I understand that the Orthodox succession is recognized by Rome and that the Anglican succession is not recognized (they changed the procedure in some way). I’m not certain about the Lutherans that claim Apostolic succession.
 
Luther broke that line of succession when he excommunicated himself.
 
Stylteralmaldo said:
I’ve heard the claim that some branches of the Lutheran Church claim to have retained the Apostolic Succession (my understanding is that it might still exist in Sweden and Finland). Is this true? Does the Vatican recognize this succession as valid?

I understand that the Orthodox succession is recognized by Rome and that the Anglican succession is not recognized (they changed the procedure in some way). I’m not certain about the Lutherans that claim Apostolic succession.
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I do know of a Lutheran Pastor who can trace his ordination through Scandinavian lines to a bishop before the reformation. However, that doesn’t mean he’s truly in Apostolic Succession and he doesn’t claim that he is. It’s more of an interesting curiosity.

Lutherans also aren’t consecrated at their ordinations, so once that first “Protestant” ordination happens, the line is effectively broken.
 
Lampo said:
Luther broke that line of succession when he excommunicated himself.
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Luther was in Germany. The OP is asking about those Scandinavian Lutheran Churches which claim Apostolic Succession.
 
rr1213 said:
Luther was in Germany. The OP is asking about those Scandinavian Lutheran Churches which claim Apostolic Succession.
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My bad. But doesn’t the Lutheran denom. all go back to Luther anyway?
 
Some non-catholic groups have looked for willing Bishops of Orthodox or other groups who have retained succession to confer the succession to them. There is nothing to stop me if I was a Lutheran pastor to go get holy orders from a willing Bishop who is not united with the Catholic Church.

This can make them actual Priests even though they have done this illicitly. You cannot stop this so it happens often. Just like the women who seek ordination, the only problem there is they do not turn out to be actual Priests as they are women and the Priesthood cannot be conferred to women.
So not only are the women illicit they are invalid as well.

So this is indeed possible and some Lutherans who have done this might have valid orders.

God Bless
Scylla
 
I am no expert on this by any means. However, I think that I heard somewhere that during the Reformation those portions of the Catholic Church that converted to Lutheran State Churches in some of the Nordic countries did so in a way that did not invalidate their orders. In other words, if this is true, they would be schismatic but with valid orders.
 
This can make them actual Priests even though they have done this illicitly. You cannot stop this so it happens often.
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But they would not be able to ordain others since they are only priests, so there would be no way to pass Holy Orders on to others once they died. There would have to be a bishop to validly ordain new bishops. That hasn’t happened has it? I have never heard of this…
 
That is true, they would not be able to ordain others, and then it would effectively die out with those priests, unless the group seeking holy orders were able to get a Bishop ordained.

Now this also involves whether thereafter they actually ordain others and those are properly ordained. This is where I am pretty much completely ignorant. There are some papers on this I am pretty sure a Pope had a study made and wrote about this, about 100 years ago.

God bless
Scylla
 
scylla said:
That is true, they would not be able to ordain others, and then it would effectively die out with those priests, unless the group seeking holy orders were able to get a Bishop ordained.

Now this also involves whether thereafter they actually ordain others and those are properly ordained. This is where I am pretty much completely ignorant. There are some papers on this I am pretty sure a Pope had a study made and wrote about this, about 100 years ago.

God bless
Scylla
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That had to do with Anglican Orders. The Pope held that the orders were not valid. Anglicans, of course, had a different opinion. Don’t know about those Lutheran Churches (not all Lutheran Churches remember) that claim Apostolic Succession.

papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13curae.htm

ucl.ac.uk/~ucgbmxd/saepius.htm
 
Thanks, this will make for some informative reading. This will help me understand more, even though it is addressing the Anglicans.

This does raise an interesting question, what about these ladies, wouldn’t this invalidate any of their ordinations that they personally perform?
anglicancommunion.org/acns/articles/33/75/acns3378.html

I know this shouldn’t affect the male Bishops, but only those succeeding the women as those would be invalid, wouldn’t they?

Now concerning Lutherans I will look to see if I can find more info on Lutherans and succession.

God Bless
Scylla
 
scylla said:
Thanks, this will make for some informative reading. This will help me understand more, even though it is addressing the Anglicans.

This does raise an interesting question, what about these ladies, wouldn’t this invalidate any of their ordinations that they personally perform?
anglicancommunion.org/acns/articles/33/75/acns3378.html

I know this shouldn’t affect the male Bishops, but only those succeeding the women as those would be invalid, wouldn’t they?..
God Bless
Scylla
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Yes, I think it creates a real problem. There was a problem, from the Catholic viewpoint, regarding Anglican orders prior to Anglicans ordaining women. That problem got much worse and harder to solve with women’s ordination (bear in mind thought that not all Anglican Churches recognize the validity of ordaining women).
 
Sr_Sally said:
I do know of a Lutheran Pastor who can trace his ordination through Scandinavian lines to a bishop before the reformation. However, that doesn’t mean he’s truly in Apostolic Succession and he doesn’t claim that he is. It’s more of an interesting curiosity.

Lutherans also aren’t consecrated at their ordinations, so once that first “Protestant” ordination happens, the line is effectively broken.
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Lutherans do NOT believe in apostolic succession, per se. They believe that anyone baptized in the Trinitarian formula is in “apostolic succession”, and that any member of the Christian family is equal in the hierarchy to the “bishops” of their respective Lutheran church/synod.

Now I will offer an interesting tidbit regarding the Icelandic Lutheran Church… they did not even have their service in the vernacular Icelandic till the 19th century and they were still using the Tridentine Latin Mass. Most “Lutherans” in Iceland probably considered themselves fully Catholic, and possibly even some considered themselves Roman Catholic… but since Iceland is an isolated island-nation, the bishops of its church cut itself off from Rome because the mother Danish church did so and most lay people probably didn’t even notice a move for centuries.
 
Stylteralmaldo said:
I’ve heard the claim that some branches of the Lutheran Church claim to have retained the Apostolic Succession (my understanding is that it might still exist in Sweden and Finland). Is this true? Does the Vatican recognize this succession as valid?

I understand that the Orthodox succession is recognized by Rome and that the Anglican succession is not recognized (they changed the procedure in some way). I’m not certain about the Lutherans that claim Apostolic succession.
Click to expand...
The latest issue of The Catholic Answer has a Q&A on page 19 on this very subject.
 
scylla said:
It is on page 19. 🙂

Scylla
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Yeah, I figured. But since I don’t subscribe to the Rock…

I don’t mean copy the answer; that wouldn’t be right. Just the basics. Does the Catholic Church recognize valid Apostolic Succession for these Nordic Lutherans or not?
 
Lampo said:
My bad. But doesn’t the Lutheran denom. all go back to Luther anyway?
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I think the Lutheran Church in Scandanavia is a little different. They have religious orders, meaning they have monks and nuns, Luther was against cloistered life. I also know that there are some Lutherans who believe in the physical presence. So I guess the Lutheran denomination is similar to the Anglican denomination in that there are both high and low church factions.
 
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