I don’t mean Lutherans, anthony, sorry. I know by Catholic teaching Luther was not a bishop, so he couldn’t ordain. I meant Anglicans. Anglican bishops who were previously Catholic bishops ordained other priests. Where did the apostolic succession break?
newadvent.org/cathen/01491a.htm
< It was this venerable ordination rite, as preserved in the English varieties of the Roman Pontifical, which was in use in the country when Henry VIII began his assaults on the ancient religion. He did not himself venture to touch it, but in the next reign it was set aside by Cranmer and his associates who, under the rule of Somerset and Northumberland, were engaged in remodelling the whole fabric of the Church of England to suit their extreme Protestant conceptions. These men pronounced the ancient forms to be utterly superstitious and requiring to be replaced by others more in conformity with the simplicity of the Gospel. Hence the origin of the Edwardine Ordinal, which, under the sanction of the Act of 1550, was drawn up by “six prelates and six other men of the realm learned in God’s law, by the King’s Majesty to be appointed and assigned”.
This new rite underwent some further changes two years later, and was thus brought into the form in which it remained till the year 1662, when it was somewhat improved by the addition of clauses defining the nature of the orders imparted…
…By this new Ordinal seven bishops and a number of inferior clergy were made during the last two years of Edward VI. On the accession of Mary in 1553 it was discarded, and the Pontifical resumed, but on the accession of Elizabeth in 1558 its use was restored, and has continued (with the addition of the defining clauses since 1662) down to the present day. The Anglican clergy are thus the creation of this Ordinal, and, primarily, the validity of their orders is dependent on its sufficiency — that is, on its sufficiency in its earlier form, for if that be wanting, the Apostolical succession must have lapsed long before 1662, and could not be resuscitated by the additions then made. It was on this consideration of the character of the Edwardine rite that the Holy See based its definitive decree of 1896…
…Apart from exceptional circumstances, such as arose in 1896, the Holy See does not indulge in purely theoretical pronouncements on questions like that of Anglican Orders, but limits its intervention to cases of practical difficulty that are brought before it — as when persons or classes of persons who wish to minister at the Church’s altars have undergone ceremonies of ordination outside its fold. And even in thus intervening the Holy See is chary of doctrinal decisions, but applies a common-sense rule that can give practical security. Where it judges that the previous orders were certainly valid it permits their use, supposing the candidate to be acceptable; where it judges the previous orders to be certainly invalid it disregards them altogether, and enjoins a re-ordination according to its own rite; where it judges that the validity of the previous orders is doubtful, even though the doubt be slight, it forbids their use until a conditional ceremony of re-ordination has first been undergone. >
