Broken Lines: How Women’s Ordination Shatters Apostolic Succession

The Rev. Dr. Ronald Moore

Oct 7, 2025

When the Church of England recently enthroned a woman as Archbishop of Canterbury, the media heralded it as a triumph of progress and equality. The ecclesiastical establishment congratulated itself for “reflecting the times.” Yet beneath the fanfare lies a grim theological reality: in crossing this line, Anglicanism has not merely altered its customs or broadened its leadership — it has ruptured the very fabric of apostolic continuity.

This is not hyperbole. The issue is not about preference, tradition, or even ecclesiastical polity. It is about sacramental reality — the sinew and lifeblood of the Church’s continuity with Christ and His Apostles. To ordain a woman as bishop is not simply to make a controversial appointment; it is to sever the line of apostolic succession itself, leaving the Church structurally maimed and sacramentally hollow.

I. Apostolic Succession: More Than a Lineage

Apostolic succession is one of the most misunderstood doctrines in the Christian faith. In the popular imagination it is often reduced to a kind of institutional pedigree — a chain of hands laid upon heads stretching back to Peter and Paul. While this visible continuity is indeed part of it, the deeper reality is far more profound.

Apostolic succession is not merely about who ordained whom; it is about what is being transmitted. The episcopate is not a managerial office but a sacramental one. Through the laying on of hands by a validly consecrated bishop, the grace and authority entrusted by Christ to the Apostles is perpetuated in the Church. It is this succession that preserves the Church’s sacramental life, ensures the valid celebration of the Eucharist, and safeguards the deposit of faith.

St. Irenaeus, writing in the second century, put it plainly: “It is within the power of all, therefore, in every Church, who may wish to see the truth, to contemplate clearly the tradition of the Apostles manifested throughout the whole world; and we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the Apostles instituted bishops in the Churches, and to demonstrate the succession of these men to our own times” (Against Heresies III.3.1). The continuity of that line is not ceremonial — it is constitutive of the Church’s very being.

II. In Persona Christi: The Christological Foundation of Holy Orders

The episcopate, and indeed the priesthood, is not a functional role that anyone may assume. It is a sacramental participation in the headship of Christ. A bishop does not simply represent the Church to the world; he represents Christ to the Church. The language of the Fathers is consistent and unwavering: the bishop is typos Christou — an icon or living image of Christ the High Priest.

This is why the Church has always insisted on the maleness of the ordained minister. Christ was not incarnate as generic humanity but as a man — not because masculinity is superior, but because in the divine economy of salvation, His male humanity is integral to His identity as the Bridegroom who lays down His life for the Bride. The nuptial mystery between Christ and His Church is inscribed in the very structure of the sacrament of Holy Orders.

St. John Chrysostom observed: “The priest stands bringing down, not fire from heaven, but the Holy Spirit. He touches the Lord of all things, and with his tongue he draws down grace from heaven” (On the Priesthood III.4). This work is not symbolic but sacramental — a participation in Christ’s own priesthood. If the sacrament is to be valid, the sign must conform to the reality it conveys. Matter and form must align. And here the Church has always understood that the matter of Holy Orders is a baptized male, precisely because the sacrament signifies Christ the Bridegroom acting for and toward His Bride.

III. Invalid Matter, Broken Sacrament

All sacraments require three things: proper form, proper matter, and proper intent. If any of these is absent, the sacrament does not merely become illicit or irregular — it becomes invalid. This is not an opinion but a settled principle of sacramental theology taught by East and West alike since the earliest centuries.

For Holy Orders, the form is the prayer of consecration, the intent is to ordain a minister of Christ’s Church, and the matter is a baptized male. Remove any of these and there is no sacrament. Thus, when a woman is presented for ordination, the Church does not “ordain a female priest” — it simply performs a ritual that has no sacramental effect. The outward ceremony may look the same, but no priesthood is conferred because the essential conditions are not met.

The implications are catastrophic. A woman “bishop” cannot validly ordain priests or consecrate bishops, because she herself does not possess the sacramental character of episcopacy. Those she “ordains” are not priests; those they “ordain” are not bishops. The chain of apostolic succession is not merely bent — it is broken. The visible structure may remain, but it becomes an empty shell, like a lamp disconnected from its source of light.

IV. The Patristic and Conciliar Consensus

The universal Church has never wavered on this point. Every ecumenical council, from Nicaea to Chalcedon and beyond, assumed without question the maleness of the episcopate and priesthood. Canon 19 of Nicaea (325) explicitly excludes women who acted as “deaconesses” from any participation in the sacramental ministry, clarifying that they “are to be counted among the laity.”

The Fathers, too, are unanimous. Tertullian scorned the notion of women assuming clerical functions: “It is not permitted for a woman to speak in the Church, nor to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer, nor to claim for herself any masculine function” (On the Veiling of Virgins 9). St. Epiphanius, writing against heresies, declared: “Never was a woman a priest among Christians” (Panarion 79.3). This unbroken consensus is not a matter of cultural conditioning but of fidelity to the apostolic deposit.

V. Apostolic Succession and Ecclesial Identity

The Church is not merely a voluntary society of believers. She is the mystical Body of Christ, animated by the Holy Spirit and structured by divine ordinance. Apostolic succession is not an optional adornment to that structure; it is its backbone. It is what binds the visible Church to the apostolic Church, ensuring that the faith once delivered to the saints is handed on not only in word but in sacrament and authority.

Without valid succession, the Church’s sacramental life collapses. The Eucharist, celebrated by one not truly ordained, is not the Eucharist. Absolution given by one without priestly authority is not absolution. Confirmation conferred by one who is not a bishop is not confirmation. What remains is not the Church Catholic but a simulacrum — a body with the form of religion but none of its sacramental substance.

This is precisely why Rome declared Anglican orders “absolutely null and utterly void” in Apostolicae Curae (1896) — not out of spite, but because defects in form and intent had rendered the succession doubtful. With the introduction of women’s ordination, that doubt becomes certainty. It is no longer possible to speak of a valid sacramental ministry in a church that ordains women as bishops. Apostolic succession there has not merely been questioned — it has ceased.

VI. A Church Divided Against Herself

Some attempt to sidestep this conclusion by claiming that apostolic succession is a matter of the Church’s recognition rather than sacramental fact — that if the Church declares a woman bishop, she is one. But this is ecclesial positivism masquerading as theology. The Church is the steward, not the master, of the sacraments. She cannot make what God has not given. As St. Augustine said of the Church’s authority: “She is the mother, not the mistress, of the sacraments.”

Moreover, such reasoning reduces apostolic succession to a human construct and the episcopate to a political office. It turns the Church into a democracy rather than a divine society. And as history shows, once sacramental reality is subordinated to the spirit of the age, the Church ceases to be the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15) and becomes instead a mirror reflecting the culture around her.

The result is internal contradiction. A body that claims communion with the apostolic Church while abandoning the conditions of apostolic succession is like a tree severed from its roots. It may appear alive for a time, but it is already dying. And unless grafted back into the living trunk, it will wither.

VII. The Cost of Fidelity — and the Call to Return

None of this is easy to say. It would be more comfortable to treat the ordination of women as a secondary matter — a difference of opinion among Christians of good will. But to do so would be dishonest. The stakes are nothing less than the Church’s sacramental identity and continuity with the apostolic faith.

The solution is not arrogance or triumphalism but repentance. The path back is not through innovation but through obedience. The Church cannot heal herself by doubling down on disobedience; she must return to the order God has established. Only then will the broken line of succession be mended and the full sacramental life of the Church restored.

The temptation to conform to the world is ancient. It is the same temptation that led Israel to demand a king “like all the nations” (1 Samuel 8:5), and the same impulse that prompted the Galatians to turn back to “the weak and beggarly elements” (Galatians 4:9). Yet the Church does not exist to reflect the world’s values; she exists to bear witness to the truth that judges the world. And that truth is not ours to redefine.

Faithfulness, Not Fashion

The enthronement of a female Archbishop of Canterbury is being hailed as a sign of progress, but it is in fact a sign of rupture. It is the outward expression of an inward schism — a church that has chosen the applause of the age over fidelity to the apostolic deposit. In so doing, it has broken the line that binds it to the Apostles, and with that break comes the collapse of sacramental assurance.

The Church does not belong to us. Her sacraments, her ministry, her order are not human inventions to be reshaped according to the mood of the times. They are divine gifts entrusted to us in fragile vessels. Our task is not to innovate but to guard, not to adapt but to hand on.

The line that stretches from the Upper Room through Antioch, Rome, Alexandria, and Canterbury is not a chain of human tradition — it is the living artery of grace. To cut it is not to evolve; it is to die. And if the Church would live again, she must return — humbly, faithfully, obediently — to the order her Lord Himself ordained.

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