Articles of the Church of England describes the monarch as 'being by God's Ordinance, according to our just Title, Defender of the Faith and ... Supreme Governor of the Church of England.' The Monarch must be in communion with the Church of England (i.e. a full, confirmed member) and, in his or her coronation oath, the monarch promises to maintain the Chry's advice.
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Many people would say that the Church of England today is both Protestant and Catholic; there is certainly a great variety of beliefs and practices within the Church. A look at some church notice-boards might confuse anyone unfamiliar with the differences between high church and low church. A look inside the churches would probably add to the confusion. A visitor entering a high church at, say, ten o'clock on a Sunday morning might find a high (sung) mass in progress and think he had entered a Roman Catholic church (the name Anglo-Catholic is sometimes used for this kind of church). The church would probably be highly decorated, the priests would be wearing various kinds of robes, people would light candles to the Virgin Mary and go to the priests for confession. By contrast, a low church service would be as simple as possible; there would be no ceremony, no candles, no private confessions and the church would look rather bare. It would seem to have more in common with the nonconformist churches. Between these two extremes there are churches with more or less ceremony, depending mainly on the views of the vicar in charge. Some Anglican priests have broken away from tradition to the extent that in some services they introduce new religious songs, composed by young people who accompany them on guitars in the church. They also use the church as a place where people can discuss the problems of everyday life; in other words, these priests want the church to become a meeting place in a wider sense, not simply for the more traditional type of religious service