On a recent evening, about 60 people — ex-Episcopalians, curious Catholics and a smattering of earnest Episcopal priests in clerical collars — gathered [in downtown Washington] for an unusual liturgy: It was Evensong and Benediction, sung according to the Book of Divine Worship, an Anglican Use liturgical book still being prepared in Rome.

… One former Episcopalian present confessed to having to choke back tears as the first plainsong strains of “Humbly I Adore Thee,” the Anglican version of a hymn by St. Thomas Aquinas, floated down from the organ in the balcony. A convert to Catholicism, she could not believe she was sitting in a Catholic Church, hearing the words of her Anglican girlhood — and as part of an authorized, Roman Catholic liturgy.