The Catholic Cemeteries of The information in the Nov. The Jesuit Forum for Social Faith and What is Apostolic Succession and why is it important? New denominations are popping up around the world. Is your denomination apostolic? The early Church was. Latest Popular. Canada Pope Francis prepares for Canadian journey of reconciliation. Voices Letters: regrets are not an apology. Voices Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton in a personally significant faith journey. More of the latest. Canada Pope Francis to visit Canada.
Catholic Vancouver Catholic video series picks up where religious education left off. View more popular. If then these things are so, it is in the same degree manifest that all doctrine which agrees with the apostolic churches—those molds and original sources of the faith must be reckoned for truth, as undoubtedly containing that which the churches received from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, [and] Christ from God. Whereas all doctrine must be prejudged as false which savors of contrariety to the truth of the churches and apostles of Christ and God.
But in truth they neither are so, nor are they able to prove themselves to be what they are not. For if she is with [the heretic] Novatian, she was not with [Pope] Cornelius.
But if she was with Cornelius, who succeeded the bishop [of Rome], Fabian, by lawful ordination, and whom, beside the honor of the priesthood the Lord glorified also with martyrdom, Novatian is not in the Church; nor can he be reckoned as a bishop, who, succeeding to no one, and despising the evangelical and apostolic tradition, sprang from himself. The unanimity of peoples and nations keeps me here. Her authority, inaugurated in miracles, nourished by hope, augmented by love, and confirmed by her age, keeps me here.
The uninterrupted passing on of apostic preaching and authority from the Apostles directly to all bishops. It is accomplished through the laying on of hands when a bishop is ordained in the sacrament of hay oreders as in-stituded by Christ.
Every bishop who is legitimately consecrated can trace his documented line of succession back to the Apostles. Even Saint Paul needed to be taught, and consecrated to his apostolic ministry, by the Church at Damascus after his direct encounter with the Lord. Apostolic succession involves the careful selection of new bishops to carry on the faith, Apostolic succession protects the Church from divisions among local dioceses and parishes. With the legalization of Christianity in the fourth century, the role of the bishops diminished.
Apostolic succession is the method whereby the ministry of the Christian Church is held to be derived from the apostles by a continuous succession , which has usually been associated with a claim that the succession is through a series of bishops. Apostolic means belonging or relating to a Christian religious leader, especially the Pope.
Apostolic means belonging or relating to the early followers of Jesus Christ and to their teaching. He saw his vocation as one of prayer and apostolic work. The Baptists believe that a faith has been saved forever once someone received Jesus Christ as the Savior. On the other hand, Pentecostals believe that one can lose salvation if the faith is not kept. Pentecostal experience is based on being annointed by the Holy Spirit and speaking of unknown tongues.
There are many pentecostal ministries all around the world, but not all of them practise Apostolic Ministry. And where Faith depends upon the despotic power of certain individuals or groups, who themselves would decide what the norm was, then truth is replaced by arbitrary power.
The true Magisterium, on the contrary, is bound by the word of the Lord and thus ushers those who listen to it into the realm of liberty. Nothing in the Church can forego this need to refer to the apostles. Pastors and their flocks cannot avoid it; statements of Faith and moral precepts must be measured by it. The ordained ministry is bound to this apostolic mediation in a double way, since on the one hand it must submit to the norm of Christian origins and on the other hand it has the duty of learning from the community of believers, who themselves have the duty to instruct it.
No preacher of the Gospel has the right to proclaim the Gospel according to personal theories he may happen to have. He proclaims the Faith of the apostolic Church and not his own personality or his own religious experience. This implies that we must add a third element to those we have already mentioned as belonging to the rule of Faith - form and content: the rule of Faith presupposes a witness who has been entrusted with a mission , who does not authorize him to speak, and that no individual community can authorize him to speak; and this comes about in virtue of the transcendence of the word.
Authorization can only be given sacramentally through those who have already received the mission. It is true that the Spirit can freely arouse in the Church various charisms of evangelization and service and inspire all Christians to bear witness to their Faith, but these activities should be exercised with reference to the three elements mentioned in the regula fidei see LG This mission trinitarian in its basis enters into the rule of Faith and implies a reference to the catholicity of Faith, which is at once a consequence of apostolicity and a condition of its permanence.
For no individual and no community by itself has this power to send on a mission. In this way catholicity explains why the believer, as a member of the Church, is introduced into an immediate participation in the trinitarian life through the mediation not only of the God-Man but of the Church who is intimately associated with him. Because of the catholic dimension of its truth and its life, the mediation of the Church has to be achieved in an ordered way, through a ministry that is given to the Church as one of its constitutive elements.
This ministry does not have as its only point of reference a historical period that is now no more and that is represented by a series of documents ; given this reference back, it must be endowed with the power of representing in itself its Source, the living Christ, through an officially authorized proclamation of the Gospel and by authoritative celebration of sacramental acts, above all the Eucharist.
Just as the divine Word made Flesh is itself both proclamation and the communicating principle of the divine life into which it brings us, so the ministry of the word in its fullness and the sacraments of Faith, especially the Eucharist, are the means by which Christ continues to be for mankind the ever-present event of salvation. Pastoral authority is simply the responsibility that the apostolic ministry has for the unity of the Church and its development, while the word is the source of salvation and the sacraments are both the manifestation and the locus of its realization.
Thus apostolic succession is that aspect of the nature and life of the Church that shows the dependence of our present-day community on Christ through those whom he has sent. The apostolic ministry is, therefore, the sacrament of the effective presence of Christ and of his Spirit in the midst of the people of God, and this view in no way underestimates the immediate influence of Christ and his Spirit on each believer.
The charism of apostolic succession is received in the visible community of the Church. It presupposes that someone who is to enter the ministry has the Faith of the Church. The gift of ministry is granted in an act that is the visible and efficacious symbol of the gift of the Spirit, and this act has as its instrument one or several of those ministers who have themselves entered the apostolic succession.
Thus the transmission of the apostolic ministry is achieved through ordination, including a rite with a visible sign and the invocation of God epiklesis to grant to the ordinand the gift of his Holy Spirit and the powers that are needed for the accomplishment of his task. This visible sign, from the New Testament onward, is the imposition of hands see LG The rite of ordination expresses the truth that what happens to the ordinand does not come from human origin and that the Church cannot do what it likes with the gift of the Spirit.
The Church is fully aware that its nature is bound up with apostolicity and that the ministry handed on by ordination establishes the one who has been ordained in the apostolic confession of the truth of the Father. The Church, therefore, has judged that ordination, given and received in the understanding she herself has of it, is necessary to apostolic succession in the strict sense of the word. The apostolic succession of the ministry concerns the whole Church, but it is not something that derives from the Church taken as a whole but rather from Christ to the apostles and from the apostles to all bishops to the end of time.
The preceding sketch of the Catholic understanding of apostolic succession now enables us to give in broad outline an evaluation of non-Catholic ministries. In this context it is indispensable to keep firmly in mind the differences that have existed in the origins and in the subsequent development of these churches and communities, as also their own self-understanding. In spite of a difference in their appreciation of the office of Peter, the Catholic Church, the Orthodox church, and the other churches that have retained the reality of apostolic succession are at one in sharing a basic understanding of the sacramentality of the Church, which developed from the New Testament and through the Fathers, notably through Irenaeus.
These churches hold that the sacramental entry into the ministry comes about through the imposition of hands with the invocation of the Holy Spirit, and that this is the indispensable form for the transmission of the apostolic succession, which alone enables the Church to remain constant in its doctrine and communion.
It is this unanimity concerning the unbroken coherence of Scripture, Tradition, and sacrament that explains why communion between these churches and the Catholic Church has never completely ceased and could today be revived. Fruitful dialogues have taken place with Anglican communions, which have retained the imposition of hands, the interpretation of which has varied.
We cannot here anticipate the eventual results of this dialogue, which has as its object to inquire how far factors constitutive of unity are included in the maintenance of the imposition of hands and accompanying prayers.
0コメント