Continuity Amidst Disruption: The Spirit and Apostolic Succession at the Reformation

What light might a greater attentiveness to the role of the Holy Spirit radiate over the tangled question of apostolic succession and the validity of orders? Here I have in mind the question of orders in the Protestant communities, as understood from a Roman Catholic perspective, although the question is relevant to some of the Eastern Orthodox and other Eastern Christian churches as well. For although it is commonly held, given the teaching of Vatican II (Unitatis Redintegratio, Decree on Ecumenism, no. 15) and later papal teaching (John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 50), that Catholics recognize the validity of orders of the Orthodox, the recognition is not always mutual.The typical Roman Catholic view of the “Protestant question,” if I may abbreviate it in this way, is that an unbridgeable break—a radical disruption—occurred at the Reformation in both the form and the matter of apostolic succession. That is, the teaching (or doctrine) about orders, as well as the concrete, institutionalized forms of its presence in the threefold diaconate-priesthood-episcopacy, were fatally disrupted at the Reformation. Apostolic succession was thereby fatally flawed, at least as regards ordained ministry. And this fatal flaw was in turn reflected in the liturgical rites and larger ecclesial institutional forms of the Protestant communities.