Thomas More, lately Lord Chancellor of England, was beheaded on Tower Hill on 6 July 1535. Thomas Cranmer, lately Archbishop of Canterbury (who had tried to save More), was burnt to death in Oxford on 21 March 1556. William Allen left England for good in 1565. The ‘Roman Catholic Relief Act’ was passed in 1829. Anglican orders were declared invalid, in 1896, through defect of both form and intention. Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, visited Pope Paul VI in 1966 and they decided to set up a joint theological commission which reported to them two years later (the Malta Report). The first meeting of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) took place at St George’s House, Windsor Castle, in 1970. The concluding meeting was at the same venue in 1981. The Final Report appeared, after mysterious delays, on 31 March 1982. Pope John Paul II is due to arrive in England at the end of May. These dates signpost the four hundred and fifty years during which the majority of the people of England and Wales (not to mention Scotland) have been out of communion with the Apostolic See.

The Final Report is now offered to the churches in communion with Canterbury as well as to the churches in communion with Rome, for us all to decide in due course whether the doctrine here set forth is sufficiently consonant with our conscientious understanding of the faith for us to proceed towards “the restoration of complete communion in faith and sacramental life”, to quote ARCIC’s original statement of intent.