On Friday the 13th, we mark the day 100 years ago when Pope Leo XIII issued his apostolic letter on Anglican orders, Apostolicae curae. This document laid out the doctrinal basis for the Roman Catholic Church's rejection of Anglican ministry, and it is the background of the continuing Roman Catholic practice of admitting Anglicans to Holy Communion only in very limited circumstances.

In 11 of its sections, Apostolicae curae presents the theological defense of what continues to be the contemporary Vatican policy of the rejection of the validity of Anglican orders, which now for 100 years the Roman Catholic Church has refused to rescind or modify. In April, Cardinal Edward Cassidy, prefect of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, said: "In the centenary year of Apostolicae curae, the papal bull of 1896 by which Leo XIII declared Anglican ordinations invalid, the Vatican plans no initiative around this."

Apostolicae curae claims that because there was a deficient view of priesthood and Eucharist at the time of the Reformation, the line of apostolic succession was decisively broken within the Church of England, and all subsequent Anglican ordinations must therefore be null and void, even if carried out in the context of an adequate, from a Roman Catholic point of view, Anglican theology of Eucharist and priesthood.

These judgments are based on the argument that Anglican ordinals have been defective since the 16th century in "intention" and "form." By "defect of intention," Leo XIII meant that by the omissions of any reference to the Eucharist as a sacrifice and to a sacrificing priesthood in the ordination ritual of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, the Church of England intended to introduce a radically new rite into England, one markedly different from those approved by the Roman Catholic Church. By "defect of form," Leo XIII meant that the words of the Anglican ordination prayer, "receive the Holy Ghost," do not signify definitely the order of the catholic priesthood with its power to consecrate and offer the body and blood of Christ in the eucharistic sacrifice.

The celebration of the Eucharist had been designated as a sacrifice early in church history. For Christianity, there is but one sacrifice - that of Christ on the cross at Calvary - but there came to be a growing understanding of a relationship between the cross of Christ and the Eucharist.

This sacrificial aspect of the liturgy came to be so emphasized that when the Roman canon of the Mass finally emerged in the sixth century, it spoke of almost nothing else. This Christian sacrifice came to be seen as being offered by the leaders of the community on the community's behalf, and in this way the theology of sacrifice prepared the way for calling the leaders of Christian worship "priests," as in the Hebrew tradition, and by this terminology distinguishing them from the rest of the people of God.

Apostolicae curae argues that the exclusion of this concept of sacrifice from eucharistic worship in the Book of Common Prayer definitively signified that Anglicans had departed from the catholic tradition and did not intend to ordain bishops and priests in the way that such ordinations had taken place before the Reformation in the Catholic Church. Accordingly, Anglicans could no longer after 1552 ordain any deacons, priests, and bishops validly in the apostolic succession.

The long Anglican tradition of holding to the eucharistic sacrifice was summed up by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in their response to Leo XIII, Saepius officio, of 1897 in which they made it clear that the Church of England had taught the doctrine of the eucharistic sacrifice in terms at least as explicit as those of the canon of the Roman Mass.

In the period following World War II, in which the Liturgical Movement was influencing the Roman Church, reforms of Pius XII and Paul VI decisively narrowed the gap between the Anglican Ordinal, which had descended from Thomas Cranmer, and the Roman Pontifical, which these two recent popes had both inherited from Leo XIII. Pius XIl, in the apostolic constitution Sacramentum ordinis of 1947, made the "matter" of the sacrament in the Roman Pontifical to be simply the laying on of hands, as in the Books of Common Prayer. In Pontificalis Romani recognitio of 1968, Paul VI formulated the principle that would now guide the Latin rite for the ordination of all bishops: Keep close to the patristic rites and to those of the Oriental Church. By these liturgical shifts, Paul VI was helping to shape a new ritual context which might be seen to be favorable to the re-evaluation of Anglican orders within the Roman Catholic Church.

Vatican Council II marked a point of no return in such a trajectory. The promulgation of the council's Decree on Ecumenism, which recognized, but did not define, the "special place" of Anglicanism among the Churches of the West, opened the way to the establishment of a dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, ARCIC, which now could officially take up the theological issues outlined by Leo XIII.

The historical significance of the ARCIC process, which led to its The Final Report of 1981, is that in the 1580s theological convergence had been reached by official representatives of the two churches on the specific issues which Leo XIII had said divided the churches: the essentials of eucharistic faith with regard to the sacramental presence of Christ and the sacrificial dimension of the Eucharist.

The "Canterbury Statement" of The Final Report concludes with these historic words: "We are fully aware of the issues raised by the judgment of the Roman Catholic Church on Anglican Orders. The development of the thinking in our two communions regarding the nature of the Church and of the ordained ministry, as represented in our statement, has, we consider, put these issues in a new context."

However, in its Response to the Final Report of 1991, the Vatican, while approving the main thrust of the statement on eucharistic doctrine, asked ARCIC for clarifications concerning points, such as:

1. the essential link of the eucharistic memorial with the sacrifice of Calvary; and,

2. the certitude that Christ is present sacramentally and substantially.

In the light of this Vatican Response, ARCIC-II published in 1993 its Clarifications of Certain Aspects of the Agreed Statements on Eucharist and Ministry, and ARC-USA, the dialogue of the Episcopal Church with the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, in 1994 published an agreed statement of Five Affirmations on the Eucharist as Sacrifice. The United States Affirmations conclude: "The Eucharist as a sacrifice is not an issue that divides our two Churches." This judgment was confirmed by a statement of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity in a letter of Cardinal Cassidy of March 11,1994, to the co-chairmen of ARCIC in response to their Clarifications: "The agreement reached on Eucharist and Ministry by ARCIC-I is thus greatly strengthened and no further study would seem to be required at this stage."

Cardinal Cassidy expanded on this sentence in an important interview recorded in The Tablet in April 1996: " ... ARCIC-I's final report, as clarified by ARCIC-II, with the above-mentioned exceptions [the question of women's ordination and the issue of the authority in the Church] is considered fully acceptable to the Catholic Church ..."

In these ways, perhaps, the Vatican is preparing the ground for the reception by its people for a new stand which it may take some day in the future on Anglican orders. All signs, however, point to a serious canonical action, such as widespread conditional ordination for convert Anglican clergy, or a concrete liturgical step, such as official interim sharing of the Eucharist, based on the theological convergence claimed, delayed for well into the second hundred years, or another pontificate. Both churches have conducted a thorough internal review of the relationship and at this point remain committed to the dialogue. The Archbishop of Canterbury will be the honored guest of Pope John Paul II in Rome in December, at which time the shape of things to come will be determined.

But a question remains before Anglicans as we mark this milestone of a century, and it has been formulated officially for the Episcopal Church in those words of our Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations: "How do we determine an Anglican policy toward Rome if there is continued Roman silence on the issue of Anglican orders?"

R. William Franklin

(The author is professor of church history at the General Theological Seminary in New York City, and editor of Anglican Orders: Essays on the Centenary of Apostolicae Curae 1896-1996, published by Morehouse in the U.S., and by Mowbray's in other parts of the Anglican Communion.)