We acknowledge it still as the "Mother Church" however, we believe it strayed from Christ wanted long ago--hence, the need for reformation. Trouble with you RCs is, you give us Protestants such hope like when Vatican II occurred, but then you pull the rug out from under us by ELECTING truculent recalcitrant types such as John Paul II to head your church. On the matter of the ordination of women, where in NT scripture is it forbidden--oh, and don't bring in the Apostle Paul to defend your argument, try one of the other 11 who actually KNEW Jesus...it must be noted, also that the very first person that Christ appeared to after the resurrection was a woman!
On another matter, it is really ashame that Leo XIII didn't regard our bishops as apostolic ones (I'm certain that he REALLY was the most unbiased judge the church could have tapped); Apart from apostolic succession, what else did he decide? That Mary I's church wasn't really RC either and that because of it, all Anglicans were doomed to 9th ring of Hell?
Well, Black, I'm sitting on pins and needles awaiting your response...really hoping this time that you won't try to fabricate something like Peter's wife dying before he was called or still refusing to believe that many of the early popes did not have wives and engaged in enjoyable sexual intercourse with them. Heaven forbid!
You are missing some nuances here. Henry the Adulterous died believing himself Catholic, hilarious though that particular pretension may be. He simply imagined himself the "head" of the Catholic Church of England.
Bear in mind that he had been deemed a "Defender of the Faith" by a pope for his published refutation of Martin Luther and of Luther's published views. This award was temporary and limited to the specifics of Henry's published religious views (as a laymen) as to Lutheranism prior to his remarkably enthusiastic dive into the pool of serial and quite public adulteries and murders. Nonetheless, his successors have assumed (in comic opera fashion: Where are Gilbert and Sullivan when we really need them?) that Defender of the Faith (Defensor Fidei) is some sort of hereditary title granted by the papacy which it is not. Right down to Lizzie II, the Brits pathetically mint their coins with the abbreviation D. F. under the constitutionally limited monarchical countenance.
Thus, such madmen as George III were regarded (despite being Germans) as "Head" of the Church of England but also defenders of the faith!!!! Hence do not libel actual Protestantism, honest "reformed" churches, by identifying Anglicanism with the reformation. The reformation was not built upon adultery, thievery and murder.
As far as our dashing your hopes that Catholicism would become a heretical faith (which will not occur because Christ Himself guaranteed that it would not) so that you could cynically say: See: We are all made of the same clay, you know!, I'm not going to apologize for the election of the very Catholic Karol Wojtlywa as Pope John Paul II, an ecclesiastical Matt Dillon to clean up the prudential (not doctrinal) mistakes of his predecessors twice and three times removed.
You can keep on reposting this business of married popes and popes who were sons of other popes until the cows come home and it won't be one whit morew valid as a criticism. The celibacy rule of the Roman rite was not imposed until the twelfth century long after the popes in question. Clerical celibacy is a changeable discipline which may be bound or loosed by Peter or his successors as they deem prudenbt. It is not dogma. It is not doctrine. It is governance. If JPII declares tomorrow that priests may marry, that is fine by me. This question has to do with OBEDIENCE to papal authority, but you already knew that, didn't you? You just want to make believe that it is permissible for Catholics, and even "Catholic" priests, to defy papal authority, just like Luther and Henry the Lecherous did. No surprise here. Move along now.
I am still waiting to hear the names of each wife of each apostle and the Scriptural reference as to each and the Scriptural evidence that any marriages that survived the call by Christ to apostlehood continued to involve sexual relations. It might well be that each and every one was married and it would be dogmatically irrelevant as well, but the burden of proof is on those who make the assertion that the apostles were married and sexually involved with wives DURING their respective ministries.
As to Peter's mother-in-law, just as a widower or a divorced man (quite permissible under Jewish law for the pre-Christian Simon bar Jonah) would still be the father of any of his children in spite of the cessation of his marriage, so too he would continue to be his mother-in-law's son-in-law. This is a lot easier to decipher than murderer Henry the Insatiable's status as murderess Lizzie I's father AND grandfather.
As to Queen Mary Tudor, she was not the "Head" of the Church of England, whatever the ignorant Parliament that had previously ordered the execution of St. Thomas More might think. If she had been the "Head" of the Church of England, you should have no trouble with her execution of the heretic Cranmer and a handful of other miscreants. Actually, she was the head of the English government. In that capacity, she executed the civil laws of the land including the execution of Cranmer after he was judged by competent ecclesiastical authority. She died with so much work undone and particularly failed to perceive the dishonesty of Lizzie I.
As to Pope Leo XIII, as pope, he and, in his time as pope, only he had the authority to determine whether the Anglicans retained legitimate apostolic succession, which flows only within or through the "Mother Church" of Rome. We do not deny and, in fact, we confirm the apostolic succession enjoyed by the Eastern Orthodox Churches which probably were not waiting on our opinion due to the 1,000 years of schism. In most respects, our contention with the Eastern Orthodox and theirs with us has usually been more bitter in its expressions than any contentions with the self-created "Church of England." This is not a matter of bias but of the truth of apostolic succession. The Eastern Orthodox have it. Your church does not, will not and cannot.
You have insisted that I should not rely on St. Paul but on one of the other 11. Apostles? Then there would be twelve, not counting Judas. Matthew was an apostle but, if you don't recognize the authority of the papacy over you, then perforce you reject Matthew. Eight of them did not participate in the divinely inspired authorship of Scripture. Peter, James and John seem not to have addressed the matter. Are there any other books of the New Testament that you reject in addition to Acts and the many Epistles of St. Paul? Has Anglicanism come to this?
Roman Catholicism is apparently not convenient to your sexual desires. It is not convenient to the sexual desires of many people. Then again, it never claimed to be convenient to the sexual desires of many although it is to many others: the ones who would be married to one person of the opposite sex until death do them part.
We are still not drafting anyone, and a good thing too since we seem to have no trouble generating Rembert Weakland types as vipers within at least in AmChurch leftist circles. May the day come when you look back fondly at JP II as much more tolerant than his successors. Read the actual documents of Vatican II and you will find considerably less encouragement for your hopes of the Protestantization of the Roman Catholic Church than you apparently imagine based upon dishonest hype by the tiny rump caucus of the faithless liberals who insist upon calling themselves Catholics.