Rowan Williams (“The limits to papal authority”, 8 January) writes of “a difference of perspective on the way in which the authority of a ‘supreme court of appeal’ in the Church should be understood” and “the Anglican unwillingness to agree that papal jurisdiction is part of the divinely ordained constitution of the Church”.

It may be that the English monarch’s sovereignty is enforced via the courts, including the Supreme Court as the final court of appeal, but it is worth noting the perspective of the English martyrs as they mounted the scaffold to face execution.
Conscience was the “supreme court of appeal” that helped them determine God’s will. God’s directives, spoken in this hidden chamber of the heart, are what constitute the Catholic Church and not, as Williams maintains, papal jurisdiction. To maintain the latter is to belittle the true witness of the English martyrs. One way out of the impasse faced by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission perhaps is to recognise where sovereignty really lies for English Catholics.

Hal St John
London SE28