Leo XIV on Anglican Dialogue: Overcoming Differences, No Matter How Intractable They Seem

[Stone]

Excerpt from Chris Jackson's April 27, 2026 substack post here.


Rome’s Hospitality Has a Direction

The official Anglican account tells us that Mullally preached at Evensong at St. Paul’s Within the Walls, visited the Lateran and St. Mary Major, prayed at the tomb of Francis, and presided at a Sung Eucharist with baptism at All Saints’ Anglican Church in Rome. The same official page says she would meet and pray with Leo XIV at the Apostolic Palace the following day.

Read that slowly.

A woman occupying the Anglican office of Archbishop of Canterbury presides at an Anglican Eucharist in Rome, preaches in Rome, tours papal basilicas, prays at papal tombs, and is received in the Vatican as an ecumenical partner. Meanwhile, the SSPX is reportedly facing a prepared excommunication decree.

The contrast is almost too obvious to write about. In Catholic sacramental theology, Anglican orders were judged by Leo XIII to be “absolutely null and utterly void.” That judgment was a formal judgment about sacramental reality.

And the ordination of women is no small Anglican oddity that Catholics can politely ignore. Even John Paul II declared in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis that the Church has “no authority whatsoever” to confer priestly ordination on women, and that this judgment must be definitively held by the faithful.

So what exactly is being honored here?

Not apostolic succession, Holy Orders, or episcopal authority. What is being honored is the ecumenical performance itself. The costume. The title. The shared vocabulary. The respectable religious diplomacy. The whole postconciliar stage production in which Catholic doctrine remains technically somewhere in the archive while the public gestures teach the faithful a different religion.

That is how modern Rome works. The doctrine remains available for specialists who need to explain why nothing has changed. The photograph teaches the real lesson.


At the Tomb of Peter

The screenshots circulating online show the moment that provoked the strongest reaction: Mullally, vested as an Anglican prelate, reportedly imparting a blessing in the Clementine Chapel near the tomb of St. Peter, with Archbishop Flavio Pace of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity present, receiving the blessing.

This is exactly the sort of image that postconciliar defenders always tell us not to interpret. We are supposed to bracket the obvious meaning. We are supposed to say it was only a gesture, only hospitality, only prayer, only a sign of respect, only ecumenism, only a moment of Christian friendship.

Then let us ask the forbidden question: why are these “only” moments always moving in the same direction?

The old Catholic instinct would have understood the danger instantly. St. Peter’s tomb is not a conference venue. The Clementine Chapel is not an interdenominational hospitality lounge. A blessing is not a handshake. A false episcopal sign enacted beside the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles is not neutral merely because a Vatican official smiles through it.

The whole point of Catholic Rome was that it testified against the claims of Canterbury. Rome said Peter. Canterbury said Cranmer. Rome said sacrifice. Canterbury said table. Rome said priesthood. Canterbury eventually said priestess, bishopess, archbishopess. Rome said return. Canterbury said dialogue. And now the Vatican has learned to act as though the disagreement were mostly a matter of tone.

Mullally’s own homily at St. Paul’s Within the Walls made the familiar move. She praised the church as the first non-Roman Catholic church built within Rome’s walls after the Reformation and treated its history as a sign of hope that division is not final. She spoke of unity, reconciliation, communion, hospitality, encounter, dialogue, refugees, justice, peace, and a Church built on Christ.

It is all very smooth. It is also exactly the problem.

The Catholic issue with Anglicanism has never been that Anglicans lack pleasant religious language. They have plenty of it. The issue is that Anglicanism was born from rebellion, sacrilege, royal supremacy, the destruction of the Mass, persecution of Catholics, and a manufactured ministry that Rome later judged invalid. Today it adds women bishops and women archbishops to the old wreckage and then arrives in Rome to speak about “visible unity.”

And Rome nods.


The Ecumenical Gospel According to Canterbury

The Anglican homily is worth reading because it is a perfect specimen of the modern ecumenical religion. It quotes Scripture, invokes Mary, speaks of the Gospel, mentions Christ crucified and risen, and then melts everything into the universal solvent of “encounter” and “hospitality.”

This is the language that now dominates ecclesiastical public life. Sin becomes woundedness. Heresy becomes difference. Schism becomes a lack of visible unity. Conversion becomes walking together. The Church becomes a space of encounter. The Gospel becomes a social grammar for peace, justice, welcome, and dialogue.

Of course Christians should care for refugees. Of course Christians should love their neighbor. Of course Christians should desire the conversion and salvation of those outside the Church. The problem comes when the evangelical mission of the Church is replaced by a managed language of mutual affirmation. The old Catholic word was return. The new word is journey. The old Catholic word was conversion. The new word is dialogue. The old Catholic word was truth. The new word is relationship. [...]

That is why the ecumenical machine can tolerate almost anything except a priest at the old altar who refuses to applaud the new order.