Noel, many in both the Roman and Anglican circles, have not and do not truly understand the Anglican Catholics except perhaps the Anglican Use movement.

'...have not and do not truly understand...'

Truer words were never uttered.
Many Catholics think that we are Protestants in disguise. Ha! If they would talk to some of our people for five minutes they would think Protestant! There isn't a molecule of Protestantism within our house. Others just can't apprehend why! These are the sort who say that 'well, we're just Cath'lic', and are happy as can be with their happy-clappy liturgy - which is Catholic only in a juridical, strictly licit, sense.
In many places we have not been welcomed, some bishops actually not permitting the Anglican Use in their dioceses. That dynamic might be somewhat moot now that we are an ordinariate.
Those (would-be) Anglo-Catholics who remain in Anglicandom have mostly made their peace with priestesses and all their baggage. So continuing to call them Anglo-Catholic is something of a misnomer. The others, who truly believe in the validity of their orders and sacraments, simply cannot fathom giving up the beautiful spiritual, cultural, and rich liturgical life that they have enjoyed for generations when they see what Rome has to offer in its place. Too, some yet imagine, vainly, that they are setting an example that in time will bring the rest of Anglicandom around. We of the ordinariate concluded quite some time ago that that was a lost cause. Rome has given us the fullness of the Catholic faith and magisterium, blessed our liturgical tradition, and given us our own ordinary. It could not be better. (And, notably, Cardinal DiNardo has shown great favour toward the ordinariate and has bent over backwards in support of us.)

Another very common misconception is that any so-called 'high church' Anglican parish or diocese is Anglo-Catholic. Nothing could be further from reality. There is much, very very much more to the genuine Anglo-Catholic tradition than throwing smoke and having illustrious music and a well-ordered liturgy - even if such a place were more or less 'conservative' (whatever from a cornucopia of connotations that might be!). Anglo-Catholicism has/had its substantial roots in a very Catholic piety, spirituality, polity, discipline, and church order and governance that are for all practical purposes extinct now that the feminists and ultra-liberals have cemented their usurpation of what once might well have become an entity that could have forged a rapprochement with Rome. To briefly reprise: incense and fine music do not in themselves an Anglo-Catholic make. Without the heritage of the Oxford Movement, the Caroline divines, the Laudian witness, and Catholic ways that were never completely stamped out by Henry VIIIth's attempted caesaro-papist church, without all this there is not an Anglo-Catholic.

And about Henry. (And these observations are not meant to absolve him or his designs.) I've been thinking just these last few weeks how differently all that might have turned out had not the arch-Calvinists and Lutherans already poisoned Henry's son, Edward the VIth. Henry had no truck with 'the reformation' and absent the reformers' wide infestation of the universities and the lawyer classes, his work might have been undone permanently. But alas, young Edward, sickly and much under the influence of 'reformers', allowed their movement to take root. A tyrant?, egomaniacal?, all these and more Henry was, but he was no friend of 'the reformation'. He just wanted full control of 'his' kingdom. And, so did other European monarchs who extracted wide powers of control over the church in their lands, most notably the all-powerful French Gallican party (France never ratified Trent nor adopted the 'Tridentine rite'!), not to mention quite a few Germans, even Catholic Spain - all of whom made it clear that they could go the way of England if they felt unable to exercise the desired degree of control over church lands, bishops, and abbots. (As an addendum one notes that, like Henry's bishops and clergy, the bishops and clergy of France at the time of the revolution had no qualms about becoming 'employees of the state' and wrapping themselves in tri-coloured sashes in a spirit of nationalistic fervour. France did not even produce a St John Fisher.)

Excellent post, Mr. Osborn.

Regarding Anglo-Catholics =/= high church Anglicans, surely you've heard Fr. Hunwicke's anecdote of the friend who specified the difference between the two: "high" churchmen never go to confession.

I do have to dispute your addendum about the bishops and clergy of the time of the Revolution having no qualms over becoming employees of the state. Only five bishops and half the clergy swore to the Civil Constitution of 1790, and a lot preferred to become non-jurors. The Vianney family attended the masses of a non-juring priest. France might not have produced a John Fisher, but it produced a John Vianney.

Not to forget Holy Redeemer, Chelsea, and Our Lady of the Assumption and Saint Gregory, Warwick Street, the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham's central church.

A list is needed.

When I discovered All Saints, Margaret Street it was due to the BBC Evensongs.

How about a list of these stellar churches and links to them and audio that shows why?

Comprehensive.

At Augustine's prayer book is very much still in print.

the reformers' wide infestation of the universities and the lawyer classes

Thus it has ever been, eh?

'How do I recognize a real Anglo-Catholic?'

The short answer is: by his faith, and his mature one-ness with it.

There are likely too few 'real' ones around anymore to recognise. But their spiritual formation would make it quite onerous (hurtful, really) for them to accomodate any or all the current abberations from Catholic identity that have overcome the Anglican church. If, as you say, your friends are at peace with these things they certainly are not A-C, for an A-C could never sanction these developments, nor remain in communion with those who do. Review my remarks way up above. Incense and well done liturgy do not make one A-C: they can be signs of being 'high church' but not necessarily of deep inward spiritual formation. As Stimson quipped above, '"high" churchmen never go to confession'. Anglo-Catholics do. Too, an Anglo-Catholic would know very well that a Roman could not receive at his church, nor he at his, and certainly would not get piqued over it. So, how do you tell? You likely would think that you were talking to a Catholic or an Orthodox until it became apparent that you and he had a different understanding of the Assumption-Dormition and the Petrine office, etc.

There are throughout Christendom, Catholic, Orthodox, and other, people and groups who are 'ritualists'. They love ritual but do not always have the faith that it would seem to imply. Many may have that faith, but there really is no necessary convergence of the two. Some Catholics, as well as others, are unfortunately blinded spiritually by these externals, these adiaphora which are, rightly understood, but the outward expressions of deep inward faith and conviction. One hastens to add that these have their direct opposites, being those who glory in an absence of 'ritual' and imagine that their 'humble' expressions make them closer to God. Actually, the low churchman and the high churchman can be birds of a feather when their ritual or lack of it are objects in and of themselves which they vainly imagine makes them closer to God.

We have ample examples of both of these in the Catholic Church, too. Note that I am not saying that low church and high church are objectively, ipso facto, markers of an ingenuine faith, but they can be, especially when undue note and advertisement is made of them. This goes for music, too. (It goes, also, for 'conservative' or 'liberal'.) (And, it goes, also, for both EF and OF.)

I'm very grateful for Dr. Maury's example. Over the years, he has given great advice on how to incorporate Gregorian peppers in my program. I have to say that Jeffrey Morse's example and assistance have been edifying as well.

I'm honored to serve as music director of St. Anne Church in San Diego (parish run by FSSP priests). During our choir season, one can find a Gregorian ordinary and full propers at two Sunday masses, polyphonic motets, chant hymns, a small number of standard English and Spanish hymns, and polyphonic mass settings several times a year. This year we have the numbers to learn a mass for double choir. Eighty volunteers give their time each week to rehearse in three choirs: a liturgical choir, a chorister (youth) choir, and a Spanish choir. Or organist offers a beautiful range of preludes, postludes, and improvisation.

In addition, we offer summer chant camps, chant workshops, and chant instruction for local Catholics.

If you're ever in San Diego, please come and worship with us! The music program is strives to provide excellence in the best of Catholic sacred music, for the greater glory of God and for the edification of the faithful.

We do not currently use banjos...

I'm very grateful for Dr. Maury's example. Over the years, he has given great advice on how to incorporate Gregorian peppers in my program.

Me too! On my show, we fill them with cream cheese, bread them, and deep-fry them. YUM!

Do the red, say the black, eat the green (peppers).

Gregorian preppies.

Gregorianischer pfefferen.

eat the green (peppers)

Green as in Bell or Green as in Jalapeno?

'...remove the icti?'

Priceless!
Besides being spot on.
Um, are icti removers on sale anywhere?

It's sold as a package deal with the Correctus© - the auto-tuning device that helps any Gregorian schola director with the constant screeching of sopranic divas or primordial sounds of your aging bass section.

All packages of the Correctus© come with the handy-dandy Neum Vaccuum©, guaranteed to suck away all those icki icti!

*Sold at Mahrt-Mart or other fine semiological retailers. Not guaranteed to work on mensuralist chant