I think the vision is a 'smaller and purer' church. Thankfully, it's helpful when the rotten fruit falls from the tree by itself, that is thes people leave to make something like the ECC, athough I disagree this their use of the word Catholic in the name of their organization..illegal perhaps??
You mentioned the path some of the Protestant denominations have taken. BTW...I think all the various groups of Christians (Catholic/Protestant/Orthodox) have contributed something positive to each other through history, despite any negatives. We should thank each other for that -- for the good stuff. It's about time to put aside the once seemingly large differences and come together, as believing Christians, to stand up to the true threats to our religion. (That's real Ecumenism as opposed to the crap these people in the article are claiming). I mean, do we have to wait until we're hiding out together in the caticones again?? It's getting late.
I've noted some other Evangelicals commenting here so I'll stick in my two cents. We have been asked to pray for Pope Benedict XVI to promote the gospel of the risen Christ. While we worship in very different ways our value systems of moral behavior are much alike. This group of "Catholics" is anathema to believing Christians.
We have our doctrinal disagreements of course, some them profound, but I don't believe any of us want to return to that tragic time and place where our respective spiritual forefathers apparently forgot that they worshiped the Prince of Peace and took up arms against one another. I have to believe that conflict was motivated as much or more by political issues as it was by spiritual issues.
More than once I have stood arm in arm with Catholic demonstrators in front of abortion mills and felt a solidarity of purpose and spiritual kinship that transcended our differences in doctrine and rites of worship. Hopefully we can agree to disagree on those differences and still put a solid front on our mutual opposition to the spiritual and secular humanist forces which are trying to take the US down the same road to institutionalized atheism that has created a spiritual vacuum in much of post-WWII western Europe. A vacuum that is being rapidly filled by the alien religion of Islam. Apart we are two minority groups within the US voting population, together we can be and should be be a force to be reckoned with politically.