Ecclesia Catholica successionem apostolicam conservat

Nine months ago, one of my dear Protestant friends spoke to me in the parking lot of Walmart, on a brutally cold afternoon after having returned from morning Mass and First Communion Catechism class for one of my children, and asserted that he had performed the research, acquired translations and spent money on trying to validate the Catholic claim of Apostolic Succession. After all of his research and study, he came to the conclusion that Apostolic Succession – as the Catholic Church claims – is fraudulent and false, as the Episcopate descends from one man in the 1500's; that 95% of all clergy derive their ordination from him and that this man's ordination can not even be traced back to the Apostles.

It was a rather bold claim – a new twist in our previous discourse – and one worth investigating, to put this line of thought to bed. My first thought was, "95% is 5% away from 100%", meaning, the Episcopate and Apostolic Succession could descend through other lines, if his research and theory were remotely correct.

And to be specific, the real data shows that 95% of the Roman Episcopate descends from this one bishop – this excludes the other Eastern Rites and even Eastern Orthodox, from which Apostolic Succession also descends.

But I decided after some busy months – which included Lent, Easter, a visit to my grandmother's house, Pentecost & my daughter's first Confession & Holy Communion – that I would reach back out to my friend and ask some qualifying questions to help formulate his formal & scholastic set of objections against Apostolic Succession and work on researching and writing a response.

The main objections lean heavily on Archbishop Scipione Rebiba, and then morph into corruption (the Donatist argument) and of course, Sola Scriptura.

I emailed him the Objections, made a few changes per his recommendation and have therefore framed the arguments as close to his viewpoint as possible.

I recently finished editing and re-reading the document several times and just emailed him a PDF copy of my response this morning at 8:46...

I am posting the PDF here as well, in case some other Protestant have similar objections to the Catholic Church and her claim to Apostolic Succession, based upon this line of reasoning.