Apostolic succession is the line of bishops stretching back to the apostles. All over the world, all Catholic bishops can have their lineage of predecessors traced back to the time of the apostles, something that is impossible in Protestant denominations, most of which do not even claim to have bishops.
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The facts are the Catholic church cannot prove a direct line to the Apostles.
Here's something on the subject of
Papal Infallibility and Apostolic Succession
In order to promote the necessary blind faith in the pope's infallibility and in the dogma that salvation is obtainable only in the Roman Catholic Church, its hierarchy has hidden the facts and rewritten history. One example is the quote by Augustine on the facing page. If, as the argument goes, Augustine, the greatest theologian ofthe Church, was willing to submit to whatever Rome (i.e., the pope and hierarchy) decreed, then surely ordinary Catholics ought to do the same. Such submission, however, is not what Augustine proposed. In context, the quote means something else. Two synods had ruled on a disputed matter and the Bishop of Rome had concurred, which "appeared to him [Augustine] more than enough, and so the matter might be regarded as at an end. That a Roman judgment in itself was not conclusive, but that a
'Concilium plenarium' was necessary for that purpose, he had himself maintained. . . ."
Nowhere else in his voluminous writings did Augustine even come close to suggesting that the Bishop of Rome had the final say on issues of faith or morals. In fact, Augustine said that the African Church had been correct in rejecting Roman Bishop Stephen's (254-7) opinion on settling a baptismal dispute. Never once, in all the arguments he proposed on many issues, did Augustine suggest that the Bishop of Rome should
be consulted as the final arbiter of orthodoxy, or even that he should be consulted at all.
Interestingly enough, though the Council of Nicea in 325 decreed that the three Bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch (the concept of a "pope" was still unknown) be designated as "superior" to other bishops of less important Christian centers, the Bishop of Rome at the time refused to accept such a distinction for himself. Historian Lars Qualben comments further:
The General Council of Constantinople in 381 designated the bishop of that city a patriarch; and the General Council of Cha1cedon in 451 gave the same title to the bishop of Jerusalem [leaving out the bishop of Rome]. . . [and] the patriarch of Constantinople [not of Rome] was voted the chief bishop of the entire 'church.
After the Western empire was destroyed in 476, the emperor of Constantinople became the sole emperor of the world, and this new dignity naturally added some prestige to the patriarch of that city. . . . The bishop of Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople became leading rivals for church supremacy.
A Doctrine First Declared by Emperors
Emperors had, in fact, declared the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome over the Western Church (but not over the Church universal) and called him "the Roman Pope" as early as the fifth century. An edict of the Emperors Valentinian III and Theodosius II in 445 declared: "We decree by this perpetual Edict that it will not be lawful for the bishops of Gaul or of other provinces to attempt anything contrary to ancient custom without the authority of that venerable man the Pope of the Eternal City."4
It must be noted that this recognition of papal authority comes from emperors, not from an ecumenical council representing the Church. The purpose on the part of the emperors was not to conform to Scripture but to maintain unity in the empire-and unity among the rival bishops and their followers was essential to that end. Rome, being the capital, had to be the center of ecclesiastical authority even as it was of civil.
Moreover, for a Catholic to take comfort in such declarations, he must also accept the fact that at the same time the emperors honored the Bishop of Rome's authority they made it clear that they were above him. The Emperor Justinian, for example, in his edict of April 17, 535, on the "Relations between Church and State," declared: "There is, indeed, a recognition of the distinction between the clerical and lay elements in Christian society; but, for all practical purposes, the Emperor is to be the controller of both, exercising, as he apparently is to do, a supervision over the 'moral wellbeing' of the clergy."5
It would be centuries before the popes would establish their authority over emperors and kings and even longer before papal infallibility and dominion over the entire Church would be thoroughly established. In fact, councils asserted their authority over popes. More than one council deposed rival claimants to Peter's throne, who were simultaneously insisting that each was the one true vicar of Christ. Though now and then the Bishop of Rome, for his own selfish reasons, attempted to assert his authority over the rest of the Church, it was not accepted by Christendom in general until near the second millennium, nor could he point either to tradition or to conciliar decrees to support the idea.
. The claim was finally made to stick in the West 19 years after the Great Schism, when, in 1073, Pope Gregory VII forbade Catholics to call anyone pope except the Bishop of Rome. Before then, many bishops were fondly addressed as "pope" or "papa." Though the Roman Catholic Church lists "popes" going back to the very beginning, and all of the alleged Bishops of Rome are now commonly referred to as such, in actual fact this title was not commonly accepted in its present meaning prior to 1073.
Saving Infallibility by Denying It
We have shown that the manner in which many popes attained that office (through military might, the maneuverings of prostitutes, purchase, patronage of emperors, mob violence, etc.) disproves the claim that the papacy has come down from Peter by an unbroken line of apostolic succession. That more than one pope occupied "Peter's Chair" at one time,