Do Anglican churches today retain worship-style characteristics of both Catholicism and also Protestantism?
Anglicans pride themselves as being the church of the middle way, the “via media” that holds many of the Catholic Church beliefs: our understanding of three holy orders and apostolic succession — bishops, priests, deacons; the importance of the sacraments, specifically, the sacraments of holy communion, the mass, and baptism, but [also] other sacraments such as marriage and confirmation and confession and absolution. We believe in the seven sacraments. In that respect, our sense of identity, our worship style does try to have continuity with the early church, the church catholic. On the other side, though, we are a church of the Reformation. We take seriously the word of God preached so that it could be understood. To have worship in our own language — whether it has historically been English in the Church of England, or all of the many languages and cultures of the Anglican Communion today — tends to favor more of a Protestant ethic, a Protestant tradition that says the elucidation
