Episcopal vs Catholic: The Real Differences, Compared

Episcopalians are not Roman Catholics. Their church is Anglican, calls itself both Protestant and catholic, and is not in communion with Rome. Episcopalians and Catholics both have bishops, both have a Mass, and both trace their orders through apostolic succession. Rome does not accept that the Episcopal ones are valid, and that single refusal explains most of the rest.

The short version

Where the Episcopal Church comes from

It is the American province of the Anglican Communion, and the Anglican Communion begins with the English Reformation.

Henry VIII’s break with Rome in the 1530s was about jurisdiction rather than doctrine. What followed under Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth I was a century of argument, out of which came the settlement Anglicans call the via media — a middle way, catholic in structure and reformed in theology.

The Book of Common Prayer, first issued in 1549 and revised repeatedly since, is the practical centre of that. Anglicans have tended to define themselves by what they pray rather than by a confession.

After American independence the colonial churches could no longer swear allegiance to the crown, and organised separately as the Protestant Episcopal Church. “Episcopal” simply means governed by bishops.

The orders question

This is the sharpest point between the two and it deserves to be stated precisely.

Anglicans hold that their bishops stand in unbroken apostolic succession. In 1896 Leo XIII issued Apostolicae Curae, which declared Anglican ordinations “absolutely null and utterly void” on grounds of defective form and intention in the Edwardian ordinal.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York replied the following year, rejecting the reasoning.

The practical consequence is that a Catholic priest who leaves for the Episcopal Church is received as a priest, and an Episcopal priest received into the Catholic Church is ordained — not re-ordained, in Rome’s view, but ordained for the first time.

Decades of ecumenical dialogue have narrowed a great deal and have not resolved this.

An individual Episcopalian becomes Catholic by being received into full communion, usually after a period of preparation: already baptized, he or she makes a profession of faith and is not baptized again.

Since 2009 there has also been a way in for whole groups. Benedict XVI’s apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus created personal ordinariates, bodies much like dioceses, in which former Anglicans become fully Catholic while keeping parts of their Anglican worship. The American one, the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, was set up in January 2012 and is based in Houston; its first leader, Jeffrey Steenson, was a former Episcopal bishop. Married former Anglican clergy can be ordained Catholic priests there; other married men only case by case, with the Pope’s permission.

Authority

Catholics hold that the apostolic deposit reaches us through Scripture and Tradition together, authentically interpreted by the bishops in communion with the Pope.

Anglicans work from what is usually called the three-legged stool: Scripture first, with tradition and reason as the means of reading it. There is no living office that settles a question definitively, which is why Anglican disputes run for a long time and are sometimes never settled at all.

That is the tradition’s characteristic strength and its characteristic weakness, and Anglicans will generally say so themselves.

The sacraments

The Catechism in the American Book of Common Prayer names two sacraments of the Gospel — baptism and the Eucharist — and then five others as “sacramental rites”: confirmation, ordination, marriage, reconciliation and unction. The older Thirty-nine Articles describe the same five as “commonly called Sacraments”.

The distinction is real but softer than it sounds. High-church Episcopalians treat all seven much as Catholics do.

On the Eucharist, the Episcopal position is a deliberate refusal to specify. Christ is really present; the mechanism is not defined. Elizabeth I is supposed to have summed it up in verse — his was the word that spake it, and what that word doth make it, that I believe and take it — which may be apocryphal and is a fair statement of the position either way.

Where they now differ most visibly

The Episcopal Church authorised the ordination of women as priests in 1976 and consecrated Barbara Harris as the Anglican Communion’s first woman bishop in 1989. The Catholic Church teaches that it has no authority to ordain women.

The Episcopal Church authorised same-sex marriage rites in 2015 and made them generally available in 2018. The Catholic Church does not permit them.

Clergy marriage is normal in the Episcopal Church and, in the Latin Church, is not — though that is a discipline rather than a doctrine, and Eastern Catholic churches ordain married men.

These differences have also caused real strain inside the Anglican Communion itself, which is worth saying rather than presenting the Episcopal Church as speaking for all Anglicans.

What both hold

The Nicene Creed without amendment. One God in three persons. Christ fully God and fully man, crucified, bodily raised, ascended, returning. Baptism in the name of the Trinity, which each recognises from the other. The creeds, the councils of the undivided church, and the ancient shape of the liturgy.

Walk into a said Mass in either and the structure will be recognisable throughout.

Frequently asked

Are Episcopalians Catholic?

They describe themselves as catholic in the creedal sense and are not in communion with Rome. The Episcopal Church is the American province of the Anglican Communion.

Is the Episcopal Church the same as the Anglican Church?

It is one part of it. “Anglican” names the worldwide family of churches rooted in the Church of England and in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Episcopal Church’s constitution calls it “a constituent member of the Anglican Communion,” so every Episcopalian is an Anglican. Not every American church with Anglican in its name is Episcopal, though: some belong to the Anglican Church in North America, a separate body formed in 2009, which consecrates only men as bishops. One of the groups that joined to form it, the Reformed Episcopal Church, keeps “Episcopal” in its name.

Does the Pope recognise Episcopal priests?

No. Apostolicae Curae (1896) declared Anglican ordinations null; the Archbishops of Canterbury and York rejected the reasoning the following year, and the question is unresolved.

Can an Episcopalian receive Catholic communion?

Ordinarily no, for the same reason as other non-Catholic Christians. Episcopal churches generally welcome baptised Christians to the table.

How many sacraments do Episcopalians have?

Two of the Gospel — baptism and Eucharist — plus five “commonly called sacraments.” In practice many parishes treat all seven much as Catholics do.

What is the via media?

The Anglican self-description as a middle way: catholic in structure, reformed in theology, with Scripture read through tradition and reason.

Related reading

• Anglicans vs Catholics: What’s the difference?
• Protestant or Episcopalian? Know the Difference
• What the Church of England Is: a Prayer Book, and a Man Who Burned for It