Page "Apostolic succession" Paragraph 8

In its 1982 statement on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches stated that " the primary manifestation of apostolic succession is to be found in the apostolic tradition of the Church as a whole ….

Under the particular historical circumstances of the growing Church in the early centuries, the succession of bishops became one of the ways, together with the transmission of the Gospel and the life of the community, in which the apostolic tradition of the Church was expressed.

" It spoke of episcopal succession as something that churches that do not have bishops can see " as a sign, though not a guarantee, of the continuity and unity of the Church " and that all churches can see " as a sign of the apostolicity of the life of the whole church ".