Anglican–Roman Catholic dialogue is the historical communication between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church, through their ecumenical relations. These were notably shaped subsequent to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).
English Reformation
Conflict between the English Crown and the Holy See began in the period known as the English Reformation which began with the rejection of papal jurisdiction in England by the declaration of royal supremacy by King Henry VIII of England, followed in time by the confiscation of church properties, the dissolution of the monasteries, the execution of priests, forced attendance at Anglican worship, forced payment of tithes to the state church and the illegalisation of Roman Catholicism. There was a brief restoration of communion with Rome during the reign of Queen Mary I of England. Her death marked the end of Roman Catholic attempts to reconcile by law the Church in England to the Holy See.
Subsequently, Pope Pius V's excommunication of Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1570 and authorisation of rebellion against her contributed to official suspicion of the allegiances of English Catholics. This, combined with a desire to assert the claims of the established church, led initially to renewed persecution by the state, and to the continued enforcement of severe legal restrictions. Most of these restrictions were only relieved three centuries later through several legislative reforms in the 19th century, cumulatively known as Catholic Emancipation. The last restriction on Roman Catholics excluding them from the throne of the United Kingdom (and by extension the other Commonwealth realms) remains, but since 2013 (provided for in right of the United Kingdom by the Succession to the Crown Act 2013) marriage to a Roman Catholic no longer bars succession.
Oxford Movement and Anglo-Catholicism
Beginning in the 19th century, members of the Oxford Movement and Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England began promoting the inclusion of certain traditional aspects of liturgy from medieval religious practice, as they believed that Anglican practice had become too plain. In the ninetieth and final of the Tracts for the Times, John Henry Newman argued that the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, as defined by the Council of Trent, were compatible with the Thirty-Nine Articles of the 16th-century Church of England.
Apostolicae curae
Although Catholic Emancipation in the United Kingdom relieved some of the tension, the Roman Catholic response to the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral was articulated in Apostolicae curae, an 1896 papal bull which declared Anglican holy orders "absolutely null and utterly void" and rejected Anglican positions on the branch theory and apostolic succession. The official reply of the archbishops of the Church of England was Saepius officio. The judgement remains in effect to the present.
Malines Conversations
Some attempts at dialogue began in 1915, when Pope Benedict XV approved a British Legation to the Vatican, led by an Anglican with a Roman Catholic deputy. However, discussion of potential reunion in the Malines Conversations eventually collapsed in 1925. Continued efforts resulted in the spread of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in both churches (and others) and the visit of George Bell, the Anglican Bishop of Chichester, to Cardinal Montini of Milan, later Pope Paul VI.
Second Vatican Council
Real rapprochement was not achieved until the warming of Roman Catholic attitudes to ecumenism under the leadership of Pope John XXIII, whose foundation of the "Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity" encouraged the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, to make a historic, though not entirely official, visit to the Vatican in 1960.
Subsequently, the Bishop of Ripon, John Moorman, led a delegation of Anglican observers to the Second Vatican Council. In 1966, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, made an official visit to Pope Paul VI and, in the following year, the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission was established. Building on Pope Paul VI's description of the Anglican Church as "our beloved Sister Church", there has been considerable productivity in these discussions, but progress was not without difficulty.