Is Anglicanism Catholic or Reformed?

The answer is yes, but with needed qualifications.  My readers know how much time and space I've devoted to the proposition that Anglicanism is a Protestant church.  I have given hints, however, that, following much of Anglican divinity, it is exceedingly important to claim our Catholic nature as well.  My readers know how fond I am of this quote from blogger Death Bredon:

The genius of the Protestant Reformation is the recognition that, during the Middle Ages, "ecclesial creep" in both the Western and Eastern portions of the Church had for all practical intents and purposes replaced Old-Law works righteousness with a new works righteousness based on the respective "New Law" of the West (the Penance-Merits-Purgation-Indulgences doctrinal phalanx) and of the East (the imposition of the Monastic Typicon upon the laity).

Furthermore, . . . the formularies of classical Anglicanism did a better job of retaining the wheat of the orthodox catholicism of the ancient Church while jettisoning the chaff of innovative medieval accretion than did any other segment of the Reformation. This is why Anglicanism can, perhaps uniquely, lay equal claim to the appellations Protestant and Catholic and affirm both without any sense of inconsistency or incoherence. Indeed, strictly speaking, in proper understanding of each term, to truly be one, you must be both.

"To truly be one, you must be both."  Newman said that to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.  I agree, rather, with Death Bredon: To be a true Protestant is to be deep in (Catholic) history and to believe all the Catholic doctrines and practices that are not in opposition to Scripture.   In fact, to the extent that Protestantism becomes uncatholic, it becomes inherently unstable, as Protestant amply demonstrates, and as the current defection of leftist Evangelicals amply demonstrates. 

This article by Peter Leithart entitled The End of Protestantism pretty much reflects my thinking on this matter, and is indicative of the kind of things I will be writing in the future on this matter.  Toward that end, I have deleted from my sidebar all the links critical of Anglo-Catholicism, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, though the OJC articles lnked there still exist.  (You'll have to search for them if you want to read them.)