I ran across an interesting website: https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/.

It is actually a database of all Roman Catholic bishops, past and present, with their histories. What is really fascinating is that their chain of consecrations are listed, their “family tree” of having hands laid on them by bishops. For Roman Catholics, this unbroken chain of apostolic succession of bishops is considered to be absolutely necessary in their theology for the confection of the sacraments. Or so it seems.

So Rome, who ostensibly bases its entire validity on canonical episcopal consecration cannot even trace its own clergy back to the Reformation. Roman Catholics simply have to take it on faith that their bishops (and thus the priests they ordain) are legitimate.

Scandinavian Lutheran bishops - and their “descendants” in the Baltics, Russia, and Africa - are likewise consecrated in apostolic succession (though not recognized as such by Rome), as the custom of traditional polity (bishop, priest, and deacon) and episcopal ordination were retained by the Scandinavian Lutherans as salutary traditions in accordance with the desire to do as so stated in our Book of Concord (Ap 14:1).

German Lutheran pastors after the Reformation were not ordained by bishops - but rather by other pastors - in a kind of presbyterial succession - which has indeed happened in antiquity and in the middle ages. This is so because Lutheran pastors do not ordain themselves, nor are they ordained by the laity. Our confessions speak of the church ordaining pastors “using their own pastors for this purpose” (SA 3:10, Tr 72). Dr. Arthur Carl Piepkorn referred to this as a “de facto succession of ordained ministers,” and he points out that Jerome considered not only bishops, but presbyters as well, to be “successors of the apostles.”

It seems that the Roman Catholic rejection of Lutheran orders based on our lack of canonically-consecrated bishops as ministers of ordination (as we find in the Papal Confutation in response to AC14) is not based on consistent theology and practice in the Roman Church.

Piepkorn participated in “Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue” - which yielded some surprising conclusions (see Volume IV on Eucharist and Ministry). One of the Roman participants (Fr. George Tavard) concluded that presbyterial successions are a matter of history, and said:

I would be prepared to go further, and to admit that episcopal succession is not absolutely required for valid ordination…. The main problem, in our ecumenical context, does not lie in evaluating historical lines of succession, but in appreciating the catholicity of Protestantism today.

Fellow participant Fr. Harry McSorley concluded, after a thorough study of the Council of Trent:

We can say without qualification that there is nothing whatever in the Tridentine doctrine on sacrament of order concerning the reality of the eucharist celebrated by Christians of the Reformation churches. Catholic theologians who have maintained that there is no sacrament of the body and blood of Christ in Protestant churches because Protestant ministers are radically incapable of consecrating the eucharist are incorrect if they think this opinion is necessitated by the teaching of Trent.

Of course, we Lutherans don’t really care whether or not the papal church recognizes our ordinations or our eucharists as valid (though they do as a matter of course recognize our baptisms). But when examined in light of both actual history and the history of their theology, their exclusive claims regarding apostolicity come unraveled, even by their own pronouncements.

And here is the final irony: while modern Roman Bishops cannot prove their line of consecrations even as far back as the Reformation, Lutheran bishops consecrated by means of the Swedish line, can indeed trace their lineages back further. This paper includes an appendix showing the succession of Swedish bishops back to its Roman Catholic “ancestor” who was consecrated in 1524. This means that confessional Lutheran bishops in various church bodies around the world have a greater claim to apostolic succession in the historical sense than even the Roman pope.

Here is the episcopal lineage of the Church of Sweden from the paper “Den apostoliska successionen i Svenska kyrkan. En studie av den apostoliska successionens roll i dialogen med Church of England.”

6. Appendix: Svenska kyrkans historiskt dokumenterade vigningslinje

As an appendix to the appendix, Paris de Grassi, also known as Paride de Grassis (the bishop of Pesaro Italy who consecrated the first Swedish bishop), has a few more “generations” in his lineage:

Achille Cardinal Grassi † (1506)

Pope Julius II (1481)

Pope Sixtus IV (1471)

Guillaume Cardinal d’Estouteville, O.S.B. †

Cardinal Guillaume was consecrated a bishop in 1439.

Thus modern Lutheran bishops have historical documentation of their successions dating back to 1439 - more than a century earlier than Roman bishops, whose records dead-end at 1541.