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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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And notably the Eastern church is the only one that the Catholics (at least now) consider a real, proper church on a near-peer level. But I don't think it's representative and certainly SSPX isn't on that level.

On a near-peer level, that's true, because they're both Chalcedonian. But there are more than one eastern churches.

The "real, proper church" thing (I assume you're referring to the "Church" vs "ecclesial community" split) has to do with the sacramental priesthood and episcopacy rather than doctrine specifically, and generally most of the Eastern churches are considered to be on the same side of that line. Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Church of the East, despite their Christological differences, all have a general sense that priests are performing a liturgical sacrifice of the Eucharist to God, which is the requirement Catholicism sets for being a "Church-Church."

Anglicanism is in an interesting category because there are priests and bishops, and the Eastern Churches are relatively warm to them on that basis, but the longstanding view of Catholicism is that Anglican orders are null and void because the Church of England, especially in the 15-1800s, relativized its understanding of what the priesthood was to more of a ministry in the Protestant sense than a sacrificial office, while the Eucharistic sacrifice was described as a "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving" (added to the first BCP communion rite by Cranmer). Both of these I know are described by modern Anglicans (except Anglo-Catholics, who've always jumped through hoops to try and make Anglican theology more Catholic than it ever was) as explicit steps of separation from Catholic theology and alignment with the continental reformation.

There's an alternate universe perhaps where Edward's minority didn't give Cranmer an in to push his agenda, or Elizabeth had a desire to impose more of her own liturgical conservatism and insisted on maintaining sacrificial priesthood as a pillar of the English establishment, and in that universe the Church of England would probably be called a "Church" by Catholic doctrine. Henry VIII was extremely Catholic in theology, and if his six articles had survived the test of time, the world may well be quite different.

Historians who study the history of Anglican sacramental theology agree fairly strongly that the CoE genuinely developed a different understanding of these elements, and so I think Apostolicae curae was a solid interpretation, even if the subsequent "we're not going to call protestant churches "churches" thing just annoyed people.

The main reason SSPX isn't on the same level is they don't want to be -- they want the "we are doing things without the Pope because the Pope is doing heretical things" without the "we are the True Church" baggage, which is obviously rather unstable. Technically speaking, the SSPX also doesn't have "lay members" or even "parishes" -- they have chapels and "people who come to mass here."

If they were to start appointing metropolitan bishops and naming a patriarch, both their self-understanding and the way in which mainstream Catholic doctrine sees them would change dramatically. The Old Catholic Churches are considered to be "Churches," though the woman-bishop thing is a problem. I should also note that the Polish National Catholic Church in the US, formed because of some ethnic tensions between Polish Catholics who felt excluded by other Catholic ethnicities -- the cardinals' desire to elect the Polish Wojtyła as Pope to connect with Polish Catholics didn't come from nowhere -- is considered a Church as well, and they also have a problem with the Old Catholics' woman thing.

There's an alternate universe perhaps where Cranmer had a higher eucharistic theology and insisted on maintaining sacrificial priesthood as a pillar of the English establishment,

That's the one without the wife in a box, yes?

I'm kind of sorry for Cranmer, and kind of not, so I can't resist laughing at him. I think he was honest in his beliefs, but man was he ever a doormat for Henry. Granted, it was 'bow or have your head chopped off' but the speed at which he went 'whatever the king says' is amazing. See his letter about Anne Boleyn where he's 'I'm astonished to hear this story but if the king says it, then okay, it must be so!' and he trots off to the Tower to dissolve the marriage that a just few years back he had worked so hard to legitimate, never mind that he owed his rise to the influence of the Boleyns:

Cranmer had the desire to put his reformist ideas in to practice, but realised he could not act on them until he acquired a more influential position. Cranmer’s relationship with Anne Boleyn and her family is seen as the starting point for his political motivations. As the Boleyn family’s chaplain, Cranmer suggested to them that if Papal authority was ended, Anne could marry Henry and become Queen of England, replacing Catherine of Aragon. Henry claimed that he could marry Anne as his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the wife of Henry’s deceased brother, was illegitimate. Thomas Cranmer was subsequently appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in March 1533. This caused a great deal of surprise, particularly as there were better qualified candidates. As Cranmer was in Austria at the time and unable to stake his claim for the position, some powerful influence must have been working on his behalf at Court.