Will Women Rising in the Church of England Influence the Vatican? 

This week, Pope Leo XIV is scheduled to join an ecumenical prayer service in the Sistine Chapel with King Charles, the “Supreme Governor” of the Church of England. (The two are heads of state: the United Kingdom and Vatican City.) The pope will jointly lead the service with Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York and currently the Church of England’s most prominent prelate. That honorific is usually given to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Still, the holder of that title, Justin Welby, announced his resignation last November after a report accused him of failing to ensure a proper investigation of claims that a prominent lay leader had abused boys and young men.  

If Thursday’s service were held a year from now, there would be an archbishop of Canterbury, and it would likely be a woman, Sarah Mullally, the bishop of London. The recent selection of Mullally, expected to be installed at Canterbury Cathedral in March, is a milestone for the Church of England, only 11 years after its General Synod approved legislation enabling women to serve as bishops. But Mullally’s rise may also resonate in the Roman Catholic Church from which the Church of England famously separated in the 16th Century. (See Henry VIII, The Tudors, Wolf Hall,  A Man for All Seasons, etc.) 

Despite their ancient split, the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches have enjoyed warmer relations for over half a century. The new relationship started very slowly but gained momentum. In its Decree on Ecumenism, the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s said: “Among those in which Catholic traditions and institutions in part continue to exist, the Anglican Communion occupies a special place”—a qualified compliment that might remind some of the condescending quip that Anglicanism is “Catholic Lite.” 

By 2016, the late Pope Francis and Welby, resplendent in vestments and bishops’ miters, joined together for a service commemorating the 50th anniversary of the meeting between Pope Paul VI and Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey. Their friendly gathering was a far cry from the Roman Catholic Church’s official position in 1896 under Pope Leo XIII that the ordinations of Anglican clergy were “absolutely null and utterly void.” A similar service featuring a female archbishop alongside the pope would be even weightier, a stunning event. (Thursday’s Sistine Chapel service is expected to include a female cleric, Rosie Frew, moderator of the Church of Scotland,  a less “Catholic” denomination.)

The Associated Press reported that a Vatican official “dodged a question” about whether this week’s Sistine Chapel service would have gone as planned had Mullally been installed in time. But it’s hard to imagine the Vatican disinviting a female archbishop of Canterbury from a prayer service in light of the rapprochement in recent decades between Rome and Canterbury. 

In the 1970s, a group of clerics and scholars—the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC)—issued statements, including on two issues that had vexed the rival branches of Christianity since the Reformation—the meaning of the rite known as the Eucharist, the Mass or Holy Communion, and the nature of the ordained ministry. 

The 1971 statement on the Eucharist finessed the longstanding debate between Protestants and Catholics about whether the rite was a sacrifice or a memorial of Christ’s atoning death, concluding that the rite was “a means through which the atoning work of Christ on the cross is proclaimed and made effective in the life of the church.” The statement also affirmed the “true presence” of Christ in the Eucharist, “effectually signified by the bread and wine which, in this mystery, become his body and blood.” But it relegated the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, long a target of Protestant polemic, to a footnote that explained why in “contemporary Roman Catholic theology” the term “is not understood as explaining how the change takes place.” 

The 1973 joint statement on the ministry likewise tried to move beyond traditional arguments between Roman Catholics and Protestants (including some Anglicans) about whether priests “sacrifice Christ” when they celebrate the Mass. “Because the eucharist is the memorial of the sacrifice of Christ, the action of the presiding minister in reciting again the words of Christ at the Last Supper and distributing to the assembly the holy gifts is seen to stand in a sacramental relation to what Christ himself did in offering his own sacrifice,” the statement said. “So our two traditions commonly used priestly terms in speaking about the ordained ministry. Such language does not imply any negation of the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ by any addition or repetition.” 

In 1982, the Vatican’s doctrinal offices expressed reservations about ARCIC’s work, saying that “it is not yet possible to say that an agreement which is truly ‘substantial’ has been reached on the totality of the questions studied by the Commission.” Still, the agreements stand as theological encouragement for closer Roman Catholic-Anglican ties. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the Church of England’s rift with Rome won’t evaporate, but the direction is clear. 

Reconciliation between the two communions undeniably is complicated by the decision of Anglican churches to ordain women and the Roman Catholic insistence that it will not do the same: “[The Catholic Church] holds that it is not admissible to ordain women to the priesthood, for very fundamental reasons,” Pope Paul VI wrote to Archbishop of Canterbury Coggan in 1975. “These reasons include: the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the Church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority, which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God’s plan for his Church.” 

In 1984, Pope John Paul II underscored the rift over women, writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie that the ordination of women in the Anglican Communion “constitutes a new and serious obstacle on the journey undertaken to arrive at the re-establishment of full ecclesial communion between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion.” 

But dissension over the ordination of women within the Anglican Church wound up creating a kind of alliance between conservative Anglicans and Rome that complicated but did not derail broader attempts at reconciliation. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI allowed disaffected Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church while retaining aspects of the Anglican liturgical heritage. The new arrangement, which created diocese-like institutions called “Ordinariates,” even allowed married Anglican priests to be ordained as Catholic priests without giving up their wives.  

Benedict’s overture especially appealed to so-called Anglo-Catholics, one of three “parties” in Anglicanism usually denoted as “high church” (emphasizing Anglicans’ Catholic roots), “low church” (Evangelical or Protestant), and a less dogmatic “broad church” or, as the Rev. Aidan Nichols, a Roman Catholic theologian, terms it, “Latitudinarian.” 

Attempts to foster closer relations have persisted despite the creation of the Ordinariates and the unwillingness of the Roman Catholic Church to entertain the idea of ordaining women in any form, even as deacons, the lowest rung of the ordained ministry. That intransigence isn’t likely to change. In an interview with Elise Ann Allen, a papal biographer, the new pope suggested that “at the moment” he didn’t allow ordaining women as deacons. And he broached the idea that the campaign for women’s ordination might be an example of the “clericalism” that Pope Francis derided. 

If reunion between the churches is far off, that doesn’t mean the pope and the rest of the Roman Catholic Church won’t treat the Anglican Communion and female clergy as fellow laborers in the Christian vineyard. In that environment, the new archbishop of Canterbury is significant. After Mullally’s selection was announced, Cardinal Kurt Koch, the prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, wrote to her. “I write to congratulate you on your appointment and to express the good wishes of the Catholic Church to you as you prepare to undertake this important service in your Church,” Koch wrote. “I pray that the Lord will bless you with the gifts you need for the very demanding ministry to which you have now been called, equipping you to be an instrument of communion and unity for the faithful among whom you will serve.” Koch also expressed hope that closeness between the two communions would continue. 

On paper, the Vatican teaches that women can’t be ordained and that the holy orders of even male Anglican clergy are invalid. Mullally’s elevation, though, really could influence the debate within the Roman Catholic Church on ordaining women. Colleen M. Griffith, a Catholic theologian and professor at Boston College, told me: “I think it is wonderful to see Bishop Sarah Mullally appointed, as I do believe that bringing gifted women spiritual leaders into greater public visibility and witnessing their powerful impact will advance hopes for greater inclusion of women in all ministerial leadership positions across denominations.” 

Mara Brecht, an associate professor and chair of the theology department of Loyola University in Chicago, Mulally’s influence on Roman Catholicism needed to be framed in the context of “synodality,” the consultative process of decision-making promoted by Pope Francis. “If Pope Leo follows in the direction of Pope Francis and there is this continued process of synodality coupled with a robust ecumenism, where the sense of the faithful extends beyond the walls of the Roman Catholic Church, then I think this kind of high-profile appointment could matter,” Brecht said. 

But she cautioned: “The theology that supports male clergy, only male ordination, is pretty deeply written into the Roman Catholic psyche…the symbolism from another community would have to be pretty strong and ubiquitous to shift the expectations of the global Roman Catholic Church.” 

The Church of England was born, in large part, because Henry VIII wanted an annulment of his marriage, which the pope would not grant. It would be ironic but also fitting in some ways if, centuries later, a female Archbishop of Canterbury managed to ever so slightly speed the advancement of women in the Roman Catholic Church. 

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