Apostolic Succession

[Peter_Jeremiah]

What is the Church's official belief regarding ordained priests and bishops who go off in to heresy? Do they lose apostolic succession? Does God/Church revoke apostolic succession upon a priest falling away from the Catholic faith?

I ask this, because I have been studying the life of Martin Luther lately, and I know the church does not officially recognize the Lutheran Church as having Apostolic succession, and I'm curious why? Does it have to do with the idea that Luther believed in the priesthood of all believers and did not require a liturgy with which to ordain priests in to his church?

Thanks for any answers.

[Brother Adam]

This is actually a pretty simple matter to solve since the Church rules on the matter of apostolic succession based on the authentic celebration of the Sacraments.

While it could be argued for some time that there were among high Anglicans some validly, though illicitly ordained clergy this could not be argued amongst Luther's followers because Luther, nor any of his followers were Catholic bishops. They had no ability to validly ordain anyone and thus there is no valid line of succession. While Luther himself was truly an ordained priest he had no faculties to ordain others, which resides with the bishop alone. For the same reason the Catholic Church recognizes the validity of the Sacrament of ordination kept in the Orthodox churches, and the validity of the ordinations of those groups separated from her for a time, such as the SSPX.