"The greatest, most ancient Church"

Anglicanism's debt to the See of Rome is profound.  Cranmer's majestic collects are, for the most part, translations and revisions of those from ancient Roman sacramentaries.  The Apostles' Creed used at Matins and Evensong is the Roman church's ancient baptismal profession of faith.  And, despite the controversy over Anglican orders and the Holy See's definitive judgment, The Preface to the Ordinal accepted the need to preserve the orders received from the Latin church - "that these Orders may be continued". 

The 1662 revision of the Book of Common Prayer implicitly acknowledged this debt when, for the first time since the Reformation, it restored the commemoration of Pope Gregory the Great to the liturgical calendar.  St Gregory, of course, initiated the missionary effort that resulted in the creation of the See of Canterbury.

Imperfectly, hesitatingly, the Anglican tradition - despite the rupture of the Reformation - has been shaped by the faith and tradition of the ancient and apostolic Roman church.  It is this historical reality which allowed the Holy See to proclaim Anglicanorum Coetibus, providing a means for Anglicans to be reconciled to the See of Peter and to thereby recover the fullness of our heritage as Latin Catholics.

Which brings us to today's commemoration of the Holy Proto-martyrs of the Roman Church.  This commemoration reminds the Universal Church that the primacy of the Roman church is built on the witness of its martyrs.  In his Epistle to the Corinthians, Clement I points to the witness of the proto-martyrs alongside the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul:

To these men who spent their lives in the practice of holiness, there is to be added a great multitude of the elect, who, having through envy endured many indignities and tortures, furnished us with a most excellent example.

To acknowledge the primacy of the Roman church is to accept the witness of Peter, Paul and the holy proto-martyrs.  It is to share in the confession of St Irenaeus - "the greatest, most ancient Church, the Church known to all, the Church founded and established in Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul ... With this Church, because of its more excellent origin, every Church must agree" (Adversus Haereses III 3, 1-3).  Anglicanorum Coetibus is a gift which allows Anglicans to share this confession.