Wonderful news from the Baltimore Sun, where it is being reported that the Mount Calvary Episcopal Church in Baltimore on Sunday "became the first congregation in Maryland to vote to break ties with the Episcopal Church and take steps to join the Roman Catholic Church."
According to the paper of record in the oldest Archdiocese in the country: "The small Anglo Catholic parish ... was feeling increasingly alienated from the Episcopal Church as it accepted priests who did not believe in what most of the congregation saw as the foundations of the faith ... The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland issued a statement Monday about the vote, but both the bishop and the rector, the Rev. Jason Catania, declined to be interviewed. A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Sean Caine, said the Catholic Church would welcome the congregation."
As you will see by these photos -- in them what appears to be a thorough sensus Catholicus -- these current Protestants look very traditionally Catholic. In fact, they look more Catholic than most Novus Ordo Catholics.
That begs two questions:
1.) How will these traditional Anglicans, especially the soon-to-be priests, feel when they begin to mix and mingle with the typical Novus Ordo priest, many of whom, at least in terms of liturgy and orthodoxy, are more entrenched in Protestantism than the Protestants? [this shunning of traditional priests already happens with many FSSP priests, so no need to pretend it's not a problem] and ...
2.) What does it say about the state of the Roman Catholic Church when Protestants have a Catholic identity tenfold greater than the average Novus Ordo "Catholic community"?
