What's in a name?

I've given this blog the rather odd title it has for three (to my mind) good reasons. Firstly, because I thought nobody else would have pinched it already; secondly, because I think it looks rather nice (and even sounds OK when you say it out loud); and thirdly, because it indicates something of the religious position I occupy, clinging to the good ship Canterbury while dipping the occasional toe into the swirling waters of both the Tiber and the Bosphorus, not to mention the rivers of Mesopotamia and further east.

Partly this is due to the fact that the good ship Canterbury needs to go into dry dock before it runs aground, and partly because I really like and appreciate the spiritual and liturgical traditions of the historic Churches of Christendom - both before and after their various splits and schisms. Along with Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor and Edward King, I also appreciate greatly Isaac the Syrian, Philip Neri, Francis de Sales, and Seraphim of Sarov. In other words, somewhat like the Gallicans, I am a conciliarist. I most certainly like and appreciate the spiritual and liturgical traditions of the Church of Rome, but to my mind, Pio Nono and the first Vatican Council should never have happened. Like St Francis de Sales, I believe general councils (real ones) to be superior to popes. In this I tag along gratefully behind the Eastern Churches, even as I appreciate their profound spiritual depth and their suspicion of Augustine. But I need to sit down from time to time, even in Church!

I love the Anglican tradition, indeed, I even love the Book of Common Prayer - a terrible admission for an Anglo-Catholic to make (although I must confess to preferring the Scottish to the English variety). I like the English Missal too, so I could almost paraphrase Noel Coward: 'Despite temptations to belong to other denominations ... ' Anglicans are often accused of being 'wishy-washy' but that seems to me a considerable improvement on small-minded certainty, so a Gallican Anglican I am, and (reasonably) proud of it!