[annalex]

I agree that in the case of St. Paul the Church had to do something extraordinary: to recognize grace given St. Paul through private revelation that he had. If Harley meant that S.t Paul was not consecrated through apostolic succession in the same way, say, Timothy was consecrated, then of course he was right. However, the passage in Galatians states that St. Paul was admitted into the fellowship of Apostles at some point. Whether or not that act can be called consecration is a semantical matter, as it was not to be repeated another time.

I am sure Harley recognized "You should read the Bible once in a while" as a common teasing that the Catholics are hearing all the time. Was my tease justified here? In his 5,629 Harley wrote:

Paul was NOT appointed through Apostolic succession. He was appointed by God and this was verified by Ananias in a vision. Now at the very least, if there were an Apostolic succession as you suppose, and Peter was the head of the Church, wouldn’t it make sense that God would have revealed Paul to Peter instead of Ananias, who wasn’t even an apostle? Instead the scriptures states that Ananias was a “disciple”-not even a church leader. And it was Ananias who laid hands on Paul so that he might regain his sight. It was after visiting with Ananias that Paul “immediately when out and preached”. My, my. He didn’t even get blessed by the first Pope.

As you can see Harley had claimed that Paul was not in any way blessed by St. Peter, and he confused healing by Ananias with a consecration to episcopate. My reaction was to the entire above quoted paragraph, but to conserve space I only quoted a short segment of it in my response.

Your version also does not include the bolded part.

Sure it does, I just checked. It is in the original. The only difference is that both King James and Douay place the "grace" clause in the beginning of the sentence, as is in the original.

[HarleyD]

My point was that I'm unclear as to what precisely Apostlic succession is. After all, Paul and Apollos were not appointed by the Jerusalem council and never even saw the members until many years later. I have not been provided a good definition by any Catholics here and, quite honestly, I went to newadvent and they failed to fully explain it to my satisfaction. So how can I expect anyone here to give me an answer; yet everyone throws the term around.

I suppose it is another "mystery" of the Church.

I am sure Harley recognized "You should read the Bible once in a while" as a common teasing

I take no offense at anything. I am a rock. (No-you can't build a church on me.)