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Hi Mark,
Thanks for your question.
Every Bishop can trace his lineage to the Apostles. It's not always easy,
but it can be done. I was recently looking up the Apostolic Succession of the Armenian Catholic Patriarch. I got pretty far back and in
just a few minutes was looking at names from the twelfth century.
Now to your second question. The Catholic Church's authority doesn't come
from the Pope, it comes from Jesus Christ who founded the Church on Peter
and the other Apostles. The Pope as successor to Peter, is the Supreme
Pontiff, but it is the Pope who derives his authority from the Church,
which is the Body of Christ. This may seem odd, because the Pope has authority
over the entire Church, yet:
- the Pope can't just get up and contradict the
Church's constant teaching.
- He can't pull a doctrine out of thin air.
- He can't reverse a matter of faith and morals that has been defined.
Now that we've cleared that up; the teaching authority of the Church includes
all the Bishops in union, not unison, with
the Pope. This has little to do with the validity of a sacrament.
For
a sacrament to be valid, it requires proper form, matter, and intent. It
also requires a validly ordained priest or bishop. The bishops
and priests in schism (of the East or now even the West) retained Apostolic
Succession and therefore they have validly ordained priests and bishops.
They maintained valid orders even though they went into schism.
Holy Orders is like Baptism, you can't undo it. When the schisms occurred,
the schismatic bishops and priests continued to administer sacraments.
They did not ever deny the nature of the sacraments. They are in schism
for the most part over jurisdictional issues.
The point here is, the schism, by itself, doesn't interrupt Apostolic
Succession.
On the other hand, during the Reformation the Reformers denied the Sacraments. They didn't pass on the Holy Orders and therefore interrupted Apostolic
Succession.
For example, Luther died a validly ordained priest. Any bishops that followed
him into Lutheranism, remained bishops but they never ordained successors
with the intention of passing on the sacrificial nature of the priesthood.
They simply ordained ministers so these denominations don't have valid
sacraments, because they have no real priests or bishops.
John
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