Madam, - As a leading Anglican churchman, Archbishop Harper would surely know that when the Pope repeats the Catholic Church's belief that those Christian communities whose structures lack a valid episcopal foundation are not true Churches in the canonical sense he is not, in any way, questioning the quality of Christian witness or holiness found in those Christian communities. Neither is he saying, as some reporters would have it, that non-Catholics are second-class Christians, still less that they may not enter heaven.
The matter is not a question of beams and splinters, but of the Apostolic structure of bishops and priests. This structure is believed by Catholics and Orthodox to be Christ's intended simple pattern by which the universal church should undertake its mission. While the Anglican communion believes itself to be part of the universal church by claiming episcopal continuity with the pre-reformation Western church and through it to the Apostles, the Catholic, and most Orthodox churches, question that claim and the validity of Anglican Orders.
None the less consistent with its belief, the Anglican Communion, like the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, officially does not recognise the validity of the ordination of clergy of non-episcopal communities such as Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists. Therefore any minister of these communities becoming an Anglican and wishing to be accepted for the Anglican priesthood will be required to be re-ordained. - Yours, etc,
FRANCIS BAILEY, Killiney, Co Dublin.