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• Apostolicae Curae

In 1896 Pope Leo XII declared all Anglican holy orders null and void. The main objection was the alleged deficiency of intention and of form. In the case of deficiency of intention, the pope believed that the Anglican rites of ordination revealed an

The pope asserted that the defect in form was the the omission from the priestly (presbyteral) ordination formula of references to sacrificing priests, and of specific mention of the distinctive characteristic of the Roman Catholic priesthood, namely to consecrate the holy eucharist. In the case of the ordination of bishops (episcopal consecration), the pope asserted the defect in form to be the omission of references to "High Priesthood." These references, however, were and are missing in certain Eastern ordination liturgies which the Roman Catholic Church considers to be valid as to form.

The defect in intention was inferred from the omissions. The pope argued that, by omitting to mention what was the distinctive characteristic of the Roman Catholic priesthood, the Ordinal was embracing a different doctrine of Holy Orders from that of the Roman Catholic Church, whose Orders had been handed down in unbroken succession from the apostles. Leo XIII declared that the

In “Saepius Officio: Answer of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to the Bull Apostolicae Curae of H. H. Leo XIII”, the Anglican Church replied. The basis of the counter-argument was that the Book of Common Prayer contained a strong sacrificial theology, in particular in the Preface to the 1550, 1552, 1559, and 1662 versions of the Ordinal. These were not discussed in Apostolicae Curae.

More recently the Rev'd John Jay Hughes, amongst other Roman Catholic writers, concluded that there were enough flaws in and ambiguity surrounding the pope’s apostolic letter that the question of the invalidity of Anglican holy orders merited re-examination.

Despite the ongoing work of the ecumenical Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), in 1998 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (then the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and later Pope Benedict XVI) issued a doctrinal commentary to accompany Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter "Ad Tuendam Fidem", which established penalties in canon law for failure to accept “definitive teaching.” Ratzinger’s commentary listed Leo XIII’s Apostolicae Curae, declaring Anglican Holy Orders to be “absolutely null and utterly void,” as one of the irreversible teachings to which Roman Catholics must give firm and definitive assent. These teachings are not understood by the church as revealed doctrines but are rather those which the church’s teaching authority finds to be so closely connected to God's revealed truth that belief in them is required in order to safeguard those revealed truths. Those who fail to give firm and definitive assent, according to the letter, “will no longer be in full communion with the Catholic church.”