Anglican vs Catholic: Why the Church of England Is Not Roman Catholic

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Anglicans are not Roman Catholics, though their mother church, the Church of England, calls itself both “catholic and reformed.” The two churches confess the ancient creeds and accept each other’s baptism, and Anglicans count their bishops, priests and Eucharist as catholic too, a claim Rome rejects. Where they differ most is over the Pope, married and women clergy, transubstantiation and the Marian dogmas.

The English church accepted the Pope’s authority from 664 until the Reformation, and for all that has divided them since, the two churches are still kin. In April 2026 an Archbishop of Canterbury and a Pope prayed together in the Apostolic Palace, though their churches cannot yet share Communion at one table.

Topic	Anglican	Catholic
Head on earth	None; the Archbishop of Canterbury is the focus of unity	The Pope, with “full, supreme, and universal power”
Shape	42 self-governing member churches	One Church in communion with Rome
Final authority	Scripture	Scripture and Tradition, interpreted by the Pope and bishops
Sacraments	Two of the Gospel, five “commonly called Sacraments”	Seven
The Eucharist	Christ really present; transubstantiation rejected	Transubstantiation
Anglican priests	Ordained in continuity with the early church	Ordinations “absolutely null and utterly void” (1896)
Clergy marriage	Allowed	Latin-rite priests normally celibate
Women clergy	Priests and bishops in the Church of England	Not possible
Mary	Honoured with feasts; Immaculate Conception and Assumption not required	Both are dogmas
Praying to saints	Article 22 rejects the “Romish Doctrine” of invoking them	Saints asked to intercede
Remarriage after divorce	Possible in church in England since 2002	Not while a first valid marriage stands
Contraception	Allowed for “a morally sound reason” since 1930	Artificial methods rejected; natural family planning allowed

The 42 member churches set many of their own rules, so where they differ, as on remarriage, women’s ordination and same-sex couples, the Anglican column gives the Church of England’s position.

To see what Anglicans and Episcopalians teach beside what Catholics teach on 55 questions, open our free tool, Compare Christian Denominations.

By its history the Anglican Church is Protestant. The Church of England was “among the churches that broke with Rome” at the Reformation, and the Episcopal Church in the United States still bears the legal name “the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.” Yet by its own account it is catholic as well. The Church of England says it “consciously retained” continuity with the early and medieval church in “its use of the catholic creeds, its pattern of ministry, its buildings and aspects of its liturgy,” while it “embodied Protestant insights in its theology.” When Anglicans call themselves catholic with a small c, they mean part of the one universal church we confess in the Nicene Creed. They do not mean Roman Catholic, and they are not in communion with the Pope.

Rome, for its part, sees something of itself in them. When the Second Vatican Council’s 1964 decree on ecumenism spoke of the communions separated from Rome at the Reformation, it said that among those “in which Catholic traditions and institutions in part continue to exist,” “the Anglican Communion occupies a special place.”

Within Anglicanism, the Church of England names three broad traditions, each with its own emphasis: an Evangelical one that stresses Scripture, preaching and justification by faith; a Catholic one, reshaped by the Oxford Movement from the 1830s, that stresses the sacraments and the ministry of bishops, priests and deacons; and a Liberal one that stresses the use of reason.

The word “Anglican” covers the whole worldwide family, 42 self-governing member churches and five extra-provincial areas in more than 165 countries, with tens of millions of members. The Church of England is its mother church, and the Episcopal Church is another member, whose differences with Rome have their own page.

The Anglican Catholic Church is a small body of its own, neither Roman Catholic nor one of the Anglican Communion’s member churches. It began after 1977, when, in its own words, “an international congress of nearly 2,000 Anglican clergy and lay people met in St. Louis, Missouri,” to protest what it saw as departures from “the catholic and apostolic faith” in the Anglican churches. Its first bishops were consecrated in Denver the next year, in 1978.

From the Synod of Whitby in 664 until the Reformation, the English church accepted the Pope’s authority. Then the Act of Supremacy of 1534 declared Henry VIII supreme head of the English Church in place of the Pope, who had opposed his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and his marriage to Anne Boleyn.

Henry changed the way the church was governed more than he changed what it believed, and Parliament’s own history notes that he kept the bishops and dioceses. The theological Reformation came under his son, Edward VI, when the Church of England took up the conviction that the Protestant reformers’ theology was “more faithful to the teaching of the Bible and the Early Church.” In 1549 an Act of Uniformity established the Book of Common Prayer, the work of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. Under Mary I (1553–58) the Church of England went back to papal authority. When Elizabeth I became queen in 1558 she reversed that again, and a new Act of Uniformity in 1559 imposed a revised Prayer Book that kept a number of Catholic practices.

Elizabeth’s settlement was set down as doctrine in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, which the clergy agreed in 1562 and which were ratified in 1571. Article 37 still puts the break in a single line: “The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.”

When Jesus told Peter, “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18), Catholics understand him to have founded an office. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that this office “is continued by the bishops under the primacy of the Pope,” who has “full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church.” It also teaches that when the Pope “proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals,” he is infallible.

The Archbishop of Canterbury holds no such office among Anglicans, and is instead the Communion’s “focus of unity,” in the Church of England’s phrase, and one of its four Instruments of Communion, alongside the Lambeth Conference of bishops, the Primates’ Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council. The member churches are autonomous, each governing itself through its own synods. Even the Lambeth Conference, as the Anglican theologian Francis J. Hall wrote in 1931, “disclaims legislative authority, and its Resolutions do not bind any one of the Anglican Churches.”

The present archbishop, Sarah Mullally, is the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury. She is married with two grown children, and in 2015 she became the fourth woman bishop in the Church of England. Neither her marriage nor her ordination would be possible for a Catholic bishop.

Article 6 says that Scripture “containeth all things necessary to salvation,” so that whatever cannot be proved from it “is not to be required of any man” as an article of faith. The Catholic Church teaches instead that the task of giving “an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition,” belongs to “the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.”

The Catholic canon has 46 Old Testament books, among them Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach and Baruch. Anglicans read those books too, but Article 6 says the church does not “apply them to establish any doctrine,” and the Catholic and Protestant Bibles differ in the same way.

The Catholic Church teaches transubstantiation: in the words of the Council of Trent, which the Catechism quotes, the consecration brings about “a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood.”

Article 28 rejects that teaching, saying it “cannot be proved by holy Writ,” and holds that the Body of Christ is received “only after an heavenly and spiritual manner” and by faith. Anglicans today believe a range of things here, and the Episcopal Church sums it up by saying that Anglican liturgical theology “affirms that Christ is really present in the Eucharist and allows for differing views on how that occurs.”

When it comes to counting the sacraments, Article 25 names two “ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel,” baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and calls confirmation, penance, orders, marriage and anointing “those five commonly called Sacraments.” The Catholic Church counts all seven as sacraments.

What divides the two churches most deeply, though, is the priesthood. In 1896 Pope Leo XIII, in Apostolicae Curae, declared that “ordinations carried out according to the Anglican rite have been, and are, absolutely null and utterly void.” He gave two reasons. The first was a defect of “form”: in his judgment the words of the ordination rite introduced under Edward VI did not express the Catholic priesthood and its power of offering the sacrifice of the Mass. The second was a defect of “intention”: he held that a rite changed to reject “what the Church does” showed an intention contrary to the sacrament. The ruling still stands, so in Catholic eyes an Anglican Eucharist lacks a validly ordained priest. The Catechism says of the churches that came from the Reformation that “Eucharistic intercommunion with these communities is not possible for the Catholic Church.”

The Church of England’s Canon B15A admits to Holy Communion “baptized persons who are communicant members of other Churches which subscribe to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and who are in good standing in their own Church.” The Catholic Church does not permit its members to accept that invitation. Its canon law says Catholics receive the sacraments “from Catholic ministers alone,” except, in necessity, from ministers of churches whose sacraments it counts valid, and after 1896 that does not include Anglican ones.

Going the other way, an Anglican may receive Communion at Mass only in danger of death or, in the judgment of the diocesan bishop or bishops’ conference, another grave necessity. Even then he or she must be unable to reach a minister of his or her own church, must ask “on their own accord,” must show the Catholic faith about the sacrament and must be “properly disposed.”

Article 32 says bishops, priests and deacons “are not commanded by God’s Law, either to vow the estate of single life, or to abstain from marriage,” so Anglican clergy may marry. In the Catholic Church’s Latin rite, priests and bishops “are normally chosen from among men of faith who live a celibate life.” That is a discipline rather than a doctrine, and Eastern Catholic churches ordain married men as priests, though they choose their bishops only from among celibates.

The Catholic line on women’s ordination is firmer, for the Catechism teaches that “only a baptized man (vir) validly receives sacred ordination” and that “the ordination of women is not possible.” In the Church of England, Libby Lane, ordained a priest in 1994, was named the first woman bishop in December 2014, and today the Archbishop of Canterbury is a woman.

The Church of England honours Mary in its calendar. It keeps the Annunciation as a principal feast and marks “The Blessed Virgin Mary” on 15 August, “The Visit of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Elizabeth” and “The Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary” on 8 December.

Anglicans are not required, though, to believe the two Catholic dogmas about her. The Immaculate Conception, proclaimed by Pius IX in 1854, teaches that Mary was “preserved immune from all stain of original sin” from the first moment of her conception. The Assumption, defined by Pius XII in 1950, teaches that at the end of her earthly life she “was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory.” Neither appears in the Thirty-nine Articles, and under Article 6 no belief can be required that Scripture does not prove. In 2005 the joint commission ARCIC went further than either church had, calling both dogmas “consonant with the teaching of the Scriptures.”

About praying to the saints, Article 22 speaks bluntly. It says that “the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping, and Adoration, as well of Images as of Reliques, and also invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented.” The Catechism teaches that the saints in heaven “do not cease to intercede with the Father for us,” and Catholics ask Mary and the saints for their prayers.

When a divorced Catholic marries again civilly, the Catechism says, the Church “in fidelity to the words of Jesus Christ” “maintains that a new union cannot be recognized as valid, if the first marriage was.” A church tribunal can instead declare that a marriage was null, “that the marriage never existed,” which leaves both people free to marry. The Church of England recognizes “that some marriages do fail,” and since 2002 “a divorced person may marry again in church” in certain circumstances, though some vicars do not feel able to take such weddings.

At the Lambeth Conference of 1930, Resolution 15 kept abstinence as “the primary and obvious method” of limiting a family, but agreed, by 193 votes to 67, that where there is “a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence,” “other methods may be used.” The Catholic Church teaches that natural family planning is morally acceptable and that any action intended “to render procreation impossible” is wrong in itself.

Over same-sex couples the Anglican churches have each gone their own way. The Church of England introduced its Prayers of Love and Faith for same-sex couples through the Living in Love and Faith process of 2020 to 2023, though its Canon B 30 still says that marriage is “of one man with one woman,” and the Episcopal Church in the United States first approved trial rites for same-sex marriage in 2015. The Catholic Church’s 2023 declaration Fiducia Supplicans allows blessings of couples in irregular situations, including same-sex couples, only in a form that “should not be fixed ritually,” and “without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.”

An Anglican who is already baptized is received into the Catholic Church with a profession of faith and is not baptized again, and since 2009 whole groups have been able to come too. Benedict XVI’s apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus created personal ordinariates, which keep “the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church.” The Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham for England and Wales began in 2011, and the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter for the United States followed in 2012, based in Houston.

Former Anglican clergy who join may be accepted “as candidates for Holy Orders in the Catholic Church,” and in Rome’s view they are then ordained for the first time. Married former Anglican ministers can be ordained, while other married men are considered only case by case, with the Pope’s permission.

The modern relationship began in 1966, when Archbishop Michael Ramsey met Pope Paul VI. That meeting led to the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission, ARCIC, the churches’ main theological dialogue, which since 1970 has issued agreed statements on the Eucharist, ministry, authority, salvation, morals and Mary. In its 1976 statement on authority it judged it “appropriate” that a universal primacy in any future union be held by the see of Rome. The Anglican Communion’s own summary adds, though, that questions remain about whether the agreements are enough to overcome all obstacles to full communion.

On 27 April 2026 Archbishop Sarah Mullally met and prayed with Pope Leo XIV in the Apostolic Palace. In her address she said the 1966 meeting “continues to bear fruit through ARCIC, IARCCUM, and the many relationships of trust that have grown between our Churches.” And the two of them, whose churches still cannot share one altar, said the grace together, the blessing that closes Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14, KJV).

• Episcopal vs Catholic
• What the Church of England Is: a Prayer Book, and a Man Who Burned for It
• Protestant Vs. Anglican: Do They Have Different Beliefs?
• Catholic vs Protestant

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