I have noticed that you have posted some things that would seem to indicate an enthusiasm for Catholic and Anglican sources. How do you feel about Anglo-Catholicism?
I don’t share fully the theology of the most papally oriented in this subset of Christianity--Some see themselves as proto-Roman Catholics, separated from the mother Church and the Papal magisterium by an accident of history. I don’t condemn them either. I pretend not that I have the power to define who is or isn’t a part of the “mystical body of our lord and Savior Jesus Christ”. I advocate what C. S. Lewis called “Mere Christianity”, and would try to emphasize the areas of common agreement rather than the areas of contention. My current formulation of my position is that I would call “brother” or “sister” one who loves God and his son Jesus, reveres the Holy Scriptures as the very word of God, and who shares beliefs that are in consonance with the creeds of the ancient universal church (such as the Nicene Creed).
I must admit that I admire the numinous awe and spectacular beauty that one can find in the worship style of high church Anglicanism and Anglo-catholicism. I was once in a men and boys choir in such a church, where prayers were solemnly intoned as incense floated in clouds above an ornate carved altar. The stone floor rumbled when the organ sounded. This kind of worship engages all of the senses in a pageant of praise. At its best it offers a real elevation of the soul, and a foretaste of heaven. I have often remarked to my wife that I hope to someday be in the Anglican section of heaven. I see the most ornate of worship forms as a kind of offering, a lifting up of the best humanity has to the glory of the Creator. And yet, like many things, the forms and styles of worship, well-intended at the outset, can take on a kind of unintended idolatry.
In the end, what Jesus said to us was “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am also”, not “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, and the correct propers are chanted…”