Hi,
Not quite. The Episcopal clergy who join the Catholic Church must fully understand and accept all the teachings of the Catholic Church and submit to the authority of the Pontiff.
.All Episcopal Priests who wish to be ordained must be part of the Catholic Church for at least two years before ordination and must go through the process called the Pastoral Provision. This requires considerable study and testing under the supervision of the bishop, diocesan mentors and the faculty of Immaculate Conception Seminary. If all is acceptable to the bishop and others at various levels in the hierarchy, then one is ordained. Former Episcopal priests and even bishops must go through the usual process of ordination, first as deacons then as priests. All of them, however, must be, to the satisfaction of the bishop, totally Catholic.
Most of the Pastoral Provision priests celebrate Mass according to the Novus Ordo, but some are licensed to celebrate according to the “Anglican Use Liturgy of the Latin Rite.” The Anglican Use Liturgy incorporates many of the phrases and language of the Book of Common Prayer, but parts of it have been changed to reflect the appropriate theology of the Catholic Church, especially with regard to the Mass as sacrifice, which is missing from the Anglican Liturgy.
All of them remain in the Latin Rite of the Church, under the authority of their local Ordinary. The new constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus, will put in place another ordinariate for former Episcopalians, but the Ordinary of that ecclesiastical structure, who may or may not be a bishop, will work in cooperation with the local Bishop of each Pastoral Provision priest.
I have corrected some mistakes in my first answer and have given a more thorough explanation thanks to a former Episcopal priest who wrote in. Many thanks to him!
Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.
