I don't care if the Church of Rome has chosen to honor a particular person or not.
It is a statement typical of a strain of thought particularly present on Thinking Anglicans and Episcopal Cafe. Perhaps the best illustration of this was the Thinking Anglican commenter who took issue with +London describing the Bishop of Rome as "undeniably the Patriarch of the West":
Bishop Chartres, *I* do not have a "Patriarch": West, East, North or South. That's why I'm an *Anglican/Episcopalian*, not a Roman or Constantinopolitan!
There is, of course, a long history of Whiggish nationalism and Enlightenment prejudice combining within Anglicanism to produce a quite vicious anti-Roman sentiment. Alongside this, however, has been a quite different tradition. Jewel's Apology - at the height of Reformation controversy - acknowledged the See of Rome's primacy of honour amongst the Churches of the West, in terms of Canon 6 of the First Council of Nicaea:
According to the judgment of the Nicene Council, we say, that the Bishop of Rome hath no more jurisdiction over the Church of God than the rest of the patriarchs, either of Alexandria, or of Antiochia have.
This affirmation of the See of Rome's status as a patriarchal see reflects the Anglican Reformation's desire to restore the relationships of the first 1,000 years. Hence, Article 37 declared that "the Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England" - the medieval concept of papal jurisdiction, as opposed to the See of Rome's honour and primacy, was denied.
It is on this basis that Anglicans can read St Irenaeus' (on this day of his commemoration) statement on the See of Rome:
It would be too tedious, in a work like this, to go through the succession lists of all the Churches. We shall, therefore, take just one, the greatest, the most ancient Church, the Church known to all, the Church founded in Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul ... With this Church, because of its most excellent origin, every Church must agree (Adversus Haereses III 3, 1-3).
Anglicanism is called to agree with this "most ancient Church", as it lived and witnessed during the first 1,000 years, prior to the development of a concept of jurisdiction alien to the patristic tradition. This was the intent of Jewel's Apology. In his critique of non-communicating attendance at the Eucharist, Jewel invoked the patristic practice of the ancient See of Rome:
If there had been any which would be but a looker-on, and abstain from the Holy Communion, him did the old fathers and bishops of Rome in the primitive Church, before private mass came up, excommunicate as a wicked person and as a pagan. Neither was there any Christian at that time which did communicate alone, whiles other looked on. For so did Calixtus in times past decree, "that after the consecration was finished, all should communicate, except they had rather stand without the church-doors; because thus (saith he) did the Apostles appoint, and the same the holy Church of Rome keepeth still."
Tomorrow, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, we will see a small sign of classical Anglicanism's reverence for the See of Rome. The choir of Westminster Abbey will join with the choir of the Sistine Chapel to sing the papal Mass for the feast day. It is an expression of the historic relationship between the Sees of Canterbury and Rome, and of Anglicanism's willingness to recognise the primacy of honour rightly accorded to the See of Peter and Paul. The Whiggish nationalism and Enlightenment prejudice of latitudinarian Anglicanism is a paltry offering when compared to an Anglicanism that takes it place in the Great Tradition, affirming with St Irenaeus the honour to be accorded to "this most ancient Church".
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