I’m RC. When I was younger I went to an Episcopalian service with a friend. I thought it was one of the most beautiful and elegant forms of worship I had ever seen.
” I thought it was one of the most beautiful and elegant forms of worship I had ever seen.”
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Yes, a ECUSA service anywhere in the country was elegant.
There were, however, two types of churches in the ECUSA.
Some we called “high church”....more like Catholic, with incense and other traditions associated with Catholics.
Unfortunately , the gays and perverts also recognized that.
As my brother says, it is one of many parts of America that has “Gone with the wind”.
I went to an Episcopalian mass back in the 1990s. It was very good and reminded me of Catholic mass when I was a very little girl in the 60s. In particular, I remember that they responded “and with your spirit”, instead of the post-Vatican II phrase “and also with you”. Now, of course, Catholics have gone back to “and with your spirit”.
Ronald Knox, after he converted, said that what he most missed was the liturgy of trhe prayer book. After the new mass was introduced, I once asked a priest why they just didn’t use the prayerbook and modify its language to fit Catholic teaching. He looked at me strangely. Pope Benedict managed to eliminate some of the banality of the English translation of the New Mass and, ironically, to extend the use of the “Anglican useage” by opening the Church to Anglicans wanting to come it. But even the Prayer Book has been robbed of much of its dignity by reforms of its language.