Pope Leo’s Doublespeak and the Unbroken Authority of Apostolicae Curae
Why the validity of Anglican orders cannot be resurrected by ecumenical theatre or the “Dutch Touch”
Introduction: The Controversy and Its Catalyst
When Pope Leo XIV hosted King Charles III and the Anglican Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, for a joint prayer service in the Sistine Chapel on 23 October 2025, cameras captured a moment unprecedented since the Reformation. The Pope and the Anglican prelate stood side by side before the Altar of the Chair, vested in choir habit, alternating English prayers and concluding with a shared blessing.
The event was hailed by some as a milestone of ecumenical friendship, but for many Catholics it was bewildering. How could the successor of Peter perform a liturgical act with ministers whose orders were once declared “absolutely null and utterly void”?
It was in response to this scene that Dr Jules Gomes—Vatican-accredited journalist and former Anglican cleric—published an article titled “Pope Leo’s Doublespeak on Whether Anglicans Have ‘Real’ Priests” on 27 October 2025. In it he accused Leo XIV of repudiating Leo XIII’s solemn bull Apostolicae Curae, suggesting that the new pope “seems to believe that Anglican bishops and priests are the real thing.” “Leo didn’t treat Charles and Cottrell as fakes,” he wrote, “He welcomed them with full honours according to their respective ecclesiastical roles.”
Gomes’s essay quickly gained traction in secular and religious media because it struck a chord with a world accustomed to judging theology by optics. But his piece rests on two serious confusions: first, a misunderstanding of the enduring authority of Apostolicae Curae and of what the Church means by the validity of Holy Orders; and second, an ignorance—perhaps a studied one—of the historical and theological defects of Anglican ordinations, including the much-invoked but fatally flawed “Dutch Touch.”
What follows therefore addresses not only the superficial controversy of papal gestures, but the deeper question of truth itself: can charity be served by ambiguity, or does real unity require fidelity to the Faith once delivered to the saints?
The Meaning of Validity
Dr Gomes opens his essay with a vivid analogy: “Would you pretend something is authentic when you know it is counterfeit?” He likens Catholic priests to “Stradivarius violins,” genuine and priceless because they possess “apostolic succession,” whereas Protestant ministers, he suggests, are “bootleg priests.” Yet he goes on to accuse Rome of hypocrisy, claiming that Pope Leo XIV, unlike Leo XIII, is now pretending the counterfeit is authentic. “Leo didn’t treat Charles and Cottrell as fakes,” he writes. “He welcomed them with full honours according to their respective ecclesiastical roles.”
Such language, at once clever and misleading, conflates ecclesiastical courtesy with sacramental reality. The Catholic Church does not “pretend” that Anglican clergy are priests; she simply distinguishes between natural and supernatural orders of relationship. To speak respectfully of Anglican ministers does not mean recognising their orders as valid any more than addressing a Protestant academic as “Doctor” implies conferring upon him a Vatican doctorate.
The question of validity is not a contest of courtesy or diplomatic posture. It concerns whether an ordination truly effects what it signifies—the ontological configuration of the ordinand to Christ the High Priest, enabling him to act in persona Christi Capitis. The Catholic priesthood is not a cultural role, but a participation in the one priesthood of Christ, instituted at the Last Supper and perpetuated by apostolic succession. The priest is no mere presider: he is the appointed minister of the propitiatory Sacrifice of the Mass.¹
Apostolicae Curae and Its Perennial Force
Gomes writes that Pope Leo XIII’s bull Apostolicae Curae (1896) “trashed Anglican orders as ‘absolutely null and utterly void’ ” but dismisses its continuing authority, claiming that “Leo XIII’s bull is now like a cannon without balls.” He imagines that the gestures of later popes have emptied the document of its power.
This betrays a misunderstanding of the nature of papal teaching. Apostolicae Curae is not a cultural opinion but a doctrinal determination, binding and enduring. Leo XIII judged that the Anglican Ordinal had, by the removal of explicit sacrificial language, corrupted the very form and intention of priestly ordination, rendering the rite incapable of conferring the sacrament.³
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reaffirmed this in 1998, declaring that Apostolicae Curae belongs among those truths that must be “definitively held.”⁴ This means it cannot be contradicted by later popes without denying the ordinary and universal magisterium. The Church’s subsequent practice—re-ordaining Anglican converts absolutely—is living proof that this judgment still binds.
The Theology of Priesthood
In what he calls a “simplification of a complex debate,” Dr Gomes argues that “there isn’t a word in the New Testament that suggests that Jesus or the apostles contemplated or created a cultic priesthood.” Citing scholars such as Raymond Brown and Kenan Osborne, he claims that “nowhere in the New Testament is the Christian minister considered to be a priest (hiereus),” and concludes that the Catholic sacerdos is “the result of a gradual development over about 300 years, a slow and cumulative development, much like pieces of snow that begin to roll down a mountainside.”
This view, while fashionable among modern exegetes, ignores the continuous theological and liturgical self-understanding of the early Church. The Catholic distinction between the sacerdotium ministeriale and the sacerdotium commune of all believers is implicit in the command of Christ: “Do this in commemoration of Me” (Lk 22:19). The apostles were not simply instructed to remember, but empowered to make present His Sacrifice sacramentally.
The Epistle to the Hebrews explicitly calls Christ “a Priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech” (Heb 5:6), identifying in Him the eternal source of the ministerial priesthood. To deny a cultic priesthood for the Church is to deny that Christ’s own priesthood continues sacramentally in history through those He commissions to offer His Sacrifice.
The New Testament’s restraint in applying hiereus to presbyters does not deny their priesthood; rather, it recognises Christ as the unique High Priest whose one Sacrifice is perpetuated through His ministers. The earliest Fathers confirm this continuity. St Ignatius of Antioch exhorted the faithful to “regard the bishop as the Lord Himself,”⁷ while St Cyprian declared that the bishop “acts in the place of Christ.”⁸ Far from being a later accretion, the sacrificial priesthood is the lifeblood of apostolic Christianity—already implicit in the Eucharistic command and explicit in the practice of the primitive Church.
Ecumenical Confusion and the Conduct of Leo XIV
Gomes observes that Leo XIV “didn’t address Cottrell as ‘Mister’ but as the ‘Most Reverend’ … Cottrell was decked out in full clerical vestments … Leo and Cottrell led the service together … and gave the benediction together in unison.” From this he infers that the Pope “seems to believe that Anglican bishops and priests are the real thing.”
It is true that such choreography invites confusion. When the Bishop of Rome prays antiphonally with those whose orders have been judged “utterly void,” the symbolism of unity can appear to contradict the theology of orders. A shared benediction at the altar of the Sistine Chapel conveys the impression of equality between two sacerdotal ministries.
Yet it must be said that simultaneity of gesture is not parity of sacrament. For true equivalence to exist, the Pope would have to receive the Anglican blessing as efficacious—signing himself as one who receives grace through another’s ministry. To bless at the same moment is theologically confused but not reciprocal; it signals a breakdown in liturgical symbolism, not doctrinal capitulation.
Diplomatic politeness cannot substitute for theological clarity. Courtesy to the Archbishop of York or to the British monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England does not require liturgical parity. A papal audience would have sufficed. Instead, the world witnessed a theatre of ambiguity, whose stagecraft seemed to contradict the unambiguous truth defined by Leo XIII.
The Historical and Theological Failure of the “Dutch Touch”
Curiously, Gomes omits any mention of the so-called “Dutch Touch”—the later claim that Anglican orders were “revived” through the participation of Old Catholic bishops of Utrecht in Anglican consecrations. This omission is striking, for the Dutch Touch remains the most common argument used to dismiss Apostolicae Curae. Yet the theory collapses under historical and theological scrutiny.
The phenomenon did not arise until after the Bonn Agreement of 1931, which established full communion between the Church of England and the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht. By then, the Utrecht hierarchy—though still possessing valid episcopal lineage—had long severed communion with Rome (after Vatican I, 1870) and had embraced modernist tendencies. Rome still recognises the Ultrajectine succession as valid in itself but not necessarily licit or efficacious when exercised outside Catholic unity.
The Archbishop of Selsey acknowledges this distinction yet insists that valid lineage alone does not confer a valid sacrament. In the post-1931 Dutch Touch, Old Catholic bishops joined Anglican consecrations conducted with the Edwardine Ordinal—a rite whose form and intention Leo XIII had already judged fatally defective. A valid hand cannot sanctify what the rite denies.
Some Old Catholic co-consecrators privately recited the Tridentine consecratory formula (later codified by Pius XII) in the midst of these Anglican ceremonies. Proponents claimed that this repaired the defect. The Archbishop rejects this as sacramentally incoherent: a rite cannot be patched together from conflicting forms. The sacrament must be a unified act expressing one intention. The isolated recitation of the Roman formula within an Anglican ceremony lacking the anointing, delivery of instruments, and other essential rubrics of the Roman Pontifical cannot supply what is missing.
Nor can individual good will compensate for defective ecclesial context. Even if an Old Catholic bishop intended to do what the Church does, the act still occurred within an ecclesial body rejecting both papal authority and the sacrificial priesthood. The public intention of the rite—not private piety—determines validity.
Thus the Dutch Touch could not “repair” Anglican orders:
- It arose decades after Apostolicae Curae and within a body estranged from Catholic faith.
- It operated inside a rite already judged invalid.
- It attempted to graft a valid formula onto a defective liturgical organism.
- It lacked the unity of faith and intention that makes a sacramental act Catholic.
The Archbishop summarises: “A valid minister acting in an invalid rite cannot make the rite valid; he only implicates himself in its defect.” The Dutch Touch remains a theological mirage—an act of courtesy performed in an invalid liturgy, incapable of restoring what only the Church’s own form, faith, and intention can confer.
The Danger of Doctrinal Amnesia
Gomes concludes his piece with the flourish that “no sinful human is a real Stradivarius. Jesus, our High Priest, is the only true Stradivarius.” But this conclusion undermines his entire analogy. If only Christ is the true Priest, then all human participation in His priesthood—Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant alike—is derivative, dependent upon His own institution. The Church’s claim is precisely that the Catholic priesthood is that divinely instituted participation, not a self-conferred imitation.
What we confront in the present pontificate is not formal heresy but habitual equivocation—a failure to distinguish between the charity of dialogue and the integrity of doctrine. The truth cannot be smuggled under the stole of diplomacy. To blur the lines between valid and invalid orders is to erode confidence in the sacraments themselves. When words lose theological precision, souls lose certainty of grace.
The Church must recover her supernatural realism: unity without truth is not unity but illusion. Ecumenism that suspends doctrine ceases to be charity; it becomes sentimentality masquerading as virtue.
Conclusion
Gomes writes that Leo XIV “treats Charles and Cottrell as brothers, not bastards,” as though paternal charity required doctrinal surrender. But the Church cannot love by lying. Apostolicae Curae remains a definitive judgment, reaffirmed by constant practice. The so-called “Dutch Touch” offers no reprieve from nullity; grace cannot be conferred by defective form or intention.
Pope Leo XIV’s gestures, though perhaps pastoral in intent, risk conveying the opposite of what the Church believes. Let those who cherish the Faith recall that the priesthood is not an ecclesiastical courtesy but a divine configuration: it cannot be simulated, replicated, or ecumenically negotiated.
The faithful must therefore pray for the restoration of clarity—for a papacy that speaks not in doublespeak, but with the voice of the Good Shepherd who knows His sheep and is known by them.
¹ Council of Trent, Session XXIII, ch. 4.
² Leo XIII, Apostolicae Curae (13 September 1896).
³ Ibid., §§25–27.
⁴ Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Commentary on the Professio Fidei (1998).
⁵ Ibid., §11.
⁶ Hebrews 5:1–10; 7:26–28.
⁷ St Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, 8.
⁸ St Cyprian, Epistle 66, 3.
⁹ Archbishop Jerome Lloyd, “On the Validity of Old Roman Orders,” selsey.org, 15 June 2024.
¹⁰ Ibid.
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