I Wish I Had Known It Would Be Like This!
July 21, 2012 36 Comments
Deborah Gyapong, in a painfully honest post:
“I wish I had known it would be like this!” That’s what a wrote last April to someone who also made this similarly arduous journey into the Catholic Church as part of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada. I wish I had known how it was going to be when we were actually received into the Catholic Church because this might have spared me such disappointment and anguish over the previous year. As most of you know from my complaints and dismay expressed publicly from time to time, I sure felt as if Cardinal Kasper’s words regarding the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), “the train has already left the station” applied to us, that we were the chopped liver of Ordinariate applicants, treated like second class citizens, that really only those from the Canterbury Communion need apply and so on.
Yes, I hoped for a much more corporate approach to our reception than the parish by parish model that in effect disintegrated the ecclesial bonds we had enjoyed in the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada and forced us to walk away from considerable assets for a poor group like ourselves in terms of wills and trusts. I still think that Rome could have handled this aspect better and maybe we would not have lost so many people.
But it is what it is. And while we are so much smaller, a remnant of the 700 Canadian communicants there were when we first reported our numbers to the Catholic Church, but those who remain are more united, more bonded. As my grandfather always used to say, “Everything always works out for the best.” Who knows. Maybe some of the people we lost will come back eventually. I hope so.
So what I am I trying to say here?
I really want to avoid anything that is going to look preachy in smugly telling people to be patient and not fret. I used to get annoyed from time to time back in the day at pep talk posts that seemed to be saying my attitude was the problem when all I saw was alarming and hurtful and it felt like I was being admonished to close my eyes to injustice.
Okay.
Things did not work out the way I expected them to and adjusting my expectations and accepting the disappointment was difficult. Experiencing the disintegration of the Traditional Anglican Communion was awful. Watching Archbishop John Hepworth’s trials I found agonizing.
I reached a point where I was really wondering if I could become Catholic. All I could see were the Church’s flaws. I wanted to flee to a simpler, more direct personal relationship with Jesus Christ like I’d experienced as an evangelical.
But once our bishops and clergy decided to join the Catholic Church with no conditions, without a nulla osta in sight, things suddenly changed for us. The welcome and generosity we have experienced has been amazing. The sense of constant spiritual attack also lifted. It’s been a honeymoon of grace since last January when the request was made to come in in April.
The generosity comes not only from our local bishops but also from the Ordinariate.
We in Canada have had a good experience of our Ordinary Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson and have found him accessible and attentive to our concerns.
I wonder, though, whether in the United States there is a disappointment concerning the Anglican Use parishes, particularly Our Lady of the Atonement (OLA), and their apparent lack of a role in the new Ordinariate.
I don’t think I’m the only one who envisioned the Anglican Use parishes being the spine of the U.S. Ordinariate, providing it with an initial stability and income that no other country would have. So, I can understand there might be some dismay that OLA, the first and most successful Anglican Use parish, is not part of it, even if we do not know all the reasons behind its withdrawal.
This morning, I saw a comment on another blog that indicated some Traditional Anglican Communion parishes in the United States feel like they and their clergy are being left on the platform as the Ordinariate train rolls by.
One thing that wise correspondent told me in response to my “I wish I had known that it would be like this” was something to the effect that maybe, in some mysterious way, the suffering and anguish contributed to the good result we are experiencing now.
“It changed you, no?”
Well, it did force me to pray. Suffering is like that. But it was risky because I was so tempted to bitterness, which is not my usual besetting sin. It was like getting hit with a craving for gambling, which I am so not interested in!
Given how bleak things looked even a year ago for us, I wonder what things will look like two years from now for those in the United States who are feeling left out or who have concerns now about how things are taking shape. Maybe Our Lady of the Atonement, will be safely and happily part of the Ordinariate and those communities that feel left behind at the station will have been gathered in. We can pray for that result.
I ask, too, that if you comment about disappointments or concerns, that you take a measured tone. There is much going on in the Ordinariate that is behind the scenes but progress is being made. Maybe not on our timetable or unfolding as we expected, but it will, we can all hope and pray, work out for the best.
Meanwhile, we can expect that there will be lots of turbulence and spiritual warfare attacking any moves towards greater Christian unity. It used to help me when I recognized that some of what I was feeling was spiritual attack. The other thing that helped was to know that everything that was happening was still under God’s watchful eye and Providence. Jesus was allowing this to happen and was I going to kick against Him?
So, I hope those who are outside and wondering why things are not going faster or more smoothly will know that I am with you in your suffering. This kind of travailing is compared to labor pains for a reason. But there are many reasons for hope and thanksgiving, too.
I hope someday you too will be saying like I am now, “I wish I had known it would be like this!”
About Fr Stephen Smuts
One never knows what “war” is going to be like, and most especially “spiritual” war, until one gets there. Indeed serious minded Christians need to realize this! (Eph. 6:10-18..noting verse 12!) And sadly often, what seems like spiritual war, is often just the flesh, ours and others. Indeed the battle is the Lord’s, and not ours! (Ps. 140:7, etc.)
As a cradle Catholic, I felt the way the Ordinariate bound did – my whole life, until 2005! One kept the Faith simply because it was true, although God knows many – if not most – of the priests and nuns one met did their level best via precept and example to get one to give up Catholicism. SInce Benedict came in, it is not as though all things are good, but they are better than they have ever been in my time (I was born in 1960) – and the Ordinariates as well as Summorum Pontificum are exemplars of that chane. The resistance to it is strong, but it is also elderly. Everything Deborah said about resenting counsels of patience resonates with me, because that is certainly how I felt in Catholic High School when we taught that we did not need confession or the rosary – and doubt was cast on the Real Presence. But for those who persevere, the rewrd has been sweet.
Wish I could be more hopeful as well. There was NO reception here in the north east. The Church is more liberal than protestant liberals and did not want any traditionalists.
North-East? Britain or the States?
The states.
http://www.usordinariate.org/communities.html
The sad reality is that the TAC faithful had unrealistic expectations about what was it was going to be like on the other side of the Tiber.
When application is made to join any firm as an “Associate”, and the Steering Committee of that firm comes back with an offer for full amalgamation, at the same time presenting you with the set of debatable-but-not-negotiable-rules of the firm, and after due deliberation some individuals accept said offer, you do not under any circumstances refer back to the previous boss, or even attempt to make him part of the decision making processes in the new setup.
You also do not tell your new bosses that the old boss was better. Especially if the deal excluded him. With good reason.
You also do not ever ask your old boss what the setup should be like in the new place. It is not for him to make the decisions. Especially when it is not in his best interests to tell the facts as they are.
Only thing left to do is buckle down, fit in, and try and make it work for you. It was an informed decision.
The irony, of course, is that whenever rank and file Catholics encounter the newcomers, they are absolutely enchanted – which is why I suggest that Ordinariate folk join the Knights of Columbus, invite friends to Mass – in a word, do everything they can to increase their visibility on the local level. This is not merely good policy – it is a concrete way of following the Pope’s directives in sharing the Anglican patrimony. As Benedict XVI says, most Catholics are liturgically illiterate; but I have seen them really respond to an Anglican Use Mass.
Enchanted is an understatement! One event for those on the West Coast, or anyone interested to participate in, really, is the Marian Procession at Los Angeles, this September. Last time I went, I remember St. Mary of the Angels participating, complete with their Anglican Vestments and all. Seeing them is what got me interested in the entire Anglicanorum Coetibus business.
Again, funny, how an authoritarian metaphor is used here? It is interesting that the EO don’t use this model much at all!
The OOLW website has just published a talk given by Fr Entwistle in Melbourne:
http://www.ordinariate.org.uk/document.doc?id=64
Pingback: Australian Ordinary Speaks on Anglican Patrimony | The Anglo-Catholic
Funny, but of course English or British Anglo-Catholics have been celebrating so-called High Mass back to the 19th century, and they did not need any Papal help then! Btw, some Lutherans (mostly in Europe, the Swed’s, etc.) sometimes use the term “High Mass”, and many Lutherans in North America celebrate the essence of High Mass, but don’t use the term itself.
I simply don’t use my older Anglican High Church priestly garb anymore, and even at the Hospital Church Worship Service (Anglican, when I do it), I see some Roman Catholics, when they come, asking me if they can receive the Sacrament, which is liturgically Low Church. And of course I say yes, as it is the Lord’s Table, and not mine! Though I usually tell them I don’t “transubstantiate” the elements, but that the Lord Jesus is Himself, “present” in bread & wine, as Luther taught. And they still receive, and even a few come back.
Sadly it is true however, many Roman Catholics theses days know so very little about their faith!
It sounds as though there’s a rising tide of disappointment, disillusionment, sense of bait-and-switch, or whatever you want to call it, about the Ordinariate. I would estimate right now that only about half of the US ACA parishes that had been in the Patrimony of the Primate are following through with entering the Ordinariate — I haven’t seen a full accounting, although a listing of ACA parishes intending to go into the Ordinariate can be found at http://www.anglicanchurches.net/scrolls/TCT/TCT_Winter2011.html However, some parishes that are now still candidates aren’t listed there, while some from the ACA Diocese of the West listed there have elected not to go into the Ordinariate and are back with the DOW. I would say that of the estimated 900 to 1000 US ACA communicants thought likely to go into the Ordinariate as of early 2011, nothing like that number is likely to materialize.
In addition, I believe that so far, only a single-digit number of US Ordinariate parishes have a building — the others are small groups meeting mostly at RC parishes. The one parish that would have been something of a poster-feature for the Ordinariate, Our Lady of the Atonement in San Diego, has elected to stay out and remain Anglican Use, for reasons about which we can only speculate.
It is going to take some time for St Mary of the Angels, which had been a member of the Patrimony and as of late 2011 had fully intended to go in, to resolve its legal issues sufficiently to allow it to consider the Ordinariate again. I would say, though, that influential parishioners have begun to ask the Rector what the parish’s other options might be (especially since as of last Friday, ACA ecclesiastical authorities had apparently endorsed the violence perpetrated against three parishioners — remaining with the ACA is not an option, and the ACA’s continued existence is likely to be in question anyhow).
Had the parish seen what the Ordinariate is actually becoming, as opposed to the optimistic pictures presented last year, it quite possibly would not have voted to go in, and given the treatment it’s received from Msgr Steenson, it is less and less likely to conclude the procedural steps still needed, assuming its legal problems and Fr Kelley’s canonically invalid “discipline” from the ACA can be resolved.
And that’s well and good. Nobody, and no parish, should enter the Catholic Church for any other reason than they believe all that the Catholic Church teaches. Still, I’ll wait until I see a decision on the Ordinariate on the parish website, one way or the other.
As a matter of interest, do you, personally, want the Ordinariate to succeed? If so, on what terms?
I want the Ordinariate to succeed, although the question of terms is very squishy: we will see the Kingdom someday, on terms that we can hardly imagine. Certainly I wait for that success. On the other hand, I read a much underrated Catholic commentator last week, R.L.Bruckberger, who stresses that hierarchy and career can become idolatries, and from what I’ve seen — if not in the nave of the Ordinariate itself, certainly in the narthex — I think that’s happening there. I’m certainly not the only one who’s beginning to put together pieces of a puzzle that suggest an in-group of disaffected Episcopal priests, largely associated with the Diocese of Ft Worth, but also including the former Rt Rev Steenson, decided they’d set up a version of the TEC old-boy network that suited them, and their vision for that was in place well before January 1, 2012. Leaving the various LGBT issues connected with TEC aside — I think they’re largely side issues until the HOB starts imposing them where they don’t belong — there was much I found unsatisfactory about TEC even before Robinson. I see no reason why those things should come into the RC Church. I would say, though, that Steenson’s performance, for whatever reason, has probably not been meeting the expectations Rome had had for it, and we’ll have to see what develops. And I try not to get caught up in any idolatry of ecclesiology.
The “idolatry of ecclesiology”, oh yes truely this exists, both “High” and “Low”! But it exists at different levels in both. Good insight!
On a little bit further reflection, why should my wishes for the Ordinariate come into it? I’m speaking here wearing two hats: one simply as an observer of a very interesting development in the history of Christianity. But at the same time, I’m evaluating this development as something that’s been (to various degrees) a real option for me and my wife, less a real option now than how it seemed a year ago. We were given a very favorable picture of Catholicism then, mixed with the potential for high-church liturgy. Since then, we’ve found that non-Ordinariate Catholicism isn’t a very good option:a low Catholic mass will do as well as a low Anglican mass, but we want a high mass with decent music, not guitars and tambourines. The RC parish down the street has guitars and tambourines, with a perfectly good organ they never play. So that in itself is a disquieting revelation: we’re told that once we’re received into the Ordinariate, we can go to any Catholic mass — but, er, why would we want to? And if our Anglo-Catholic Ordinariate parish goes poof, would we then think it an option to join the guitar and tambourine bunch down the street? I don’t think so, we’d more likely find an Episcopal parish again. I don’t think God would disapprove of our wish to find worship that’s a slightly less pale reflection of His grandeur.
So from a purely personal standpoint, the Ordinariate is simply receding as a real option: if we live in St Mary of the Angels is out, which it unquestionably is for the foreseeable future, we’d have to drive 40 miles or whatever to join a sad little society of whoosis with mediocre music and no other program. But as an observer with less of a dog in the whole fight, I’ve got to say that the Ordinariate in North America overall is mostly a collection (maxing out as a few dozen) of sad little societies of whoosis with no building, no program, and no future, connected to a denomination whose mainstream worship is unappealing. Stephen seems to think that if I wish this to succeed, I can control it and make it succeed. I’m not sure how that happens!
Indeed John, the reverence and worship of God must come from the People of God, from the so-called hierarchy to the so-called laity, but the idea that either the Catholic West or the Orthodox East have all the Divine Liturgy of God, is just not theologically true to my mind at least. I will die as an Anglican, and with my BCP! Indeed, both “catholic” and “reformed”. And with those Caroline Divines, like Bishop Andrewes, etc. During the period of the Restoration, efforts were made to maintain a daily eucharist with communion in some of the cathedrals and London churches; and as late as 1750, as Whitefield tells us, there was daily communion in Lady Huntingdon’s ‘Connexion’.
‘Father of uncreated light,
Fountain of life and Source of power,
We tremble at Thy glory’s height,
And lost in silent praise adore.
Truly Thou art a secret God,
That hid’st Thee in the deepest shade;
Thy inaccessible abode
Thou hast in cloud and darkness made.
Darkness and cloud surround Thy throne,
And veil the brightness of Thy face;
Still we revere a God unknown,
A bottomless abyss of grace.
Who, can all Thy counsel see,
Thine uttermost perfection prove,
Fathom the depths of Deity,
The mystery of redeeming love!
Thy judgments all our thoughts transcend,
Thy love is written on our hearts,
Thy love in part we comprehend,
Love, only love, we know Thou art.’
~ Charles Wesley
John Bruce: Stephen seems to think that if I wish this to succeed, I can control it and make it succeed. I’m not sure how that happens!
Actually, you don’t know what I think (and it’s certainly not that). I was just curious, as you seem to be so angry about various matters (on which I do not essay an opinion) that touch the Ordinariate, about what you really thought of the Ordinariate itself. Thank you for providing such an expansive answer, it was much more than I had anticipated.
There are a few people on various Ordinariate blogs who seem to lie in wait, ready to delight in every failure. It’s nice to know that you’re not one of them.
Stephen, now I’m curious: you say I seem to be angry. I suppose in certain areas, everyone is a little ticked off, and the Saviour Himself cast the money-changers out of the temple and several times sharply rebuked the first Pope. On the other hand, I believe the sin of Anger involves having that threaten to take over your life and dominate your outlook and behavior.
Separately, I reflected more on R.L.Bruckberger’s remarks on frivolity in his History of Jesus Christ (which received the nihil obstat-imprimatur). He discusses it specifically with reference to Christ’s encounter with Herod the Younger during the Passion: Christ has a dialogue with everyone else: Pilate, the Sanhedrin, the soldiers in the garden, even Judas, but he remains silent in front of Herod. Bruckberger thinks this is because Herod, unlike the others, is simply frivolous — he wants to be diverted with a miracle for a few minutes. He then applies the matter of frivolity to kings, artists, the wealthy, even bishops. I believe our brothers and sisters the Jews pray to atone for “sins of light-headedness”, and I think this must be a very similar sort of sin.
This is the problem that’s beset the northern-hemisphere Anglican Communion, especially TEC and Rowan Williams. I think the frivolity long predates any issues over LGBT or the consecration of Bp Robinson, which were the specific matters that drove the post-2000 departures, and that includes Msgr Steenson and the formation of the Ordinariates. A current example non-LGBT is the endorsement of funerals for dogs and cats, passed at the Indianapolis convention. My wife and I were communicants at a largely gay, urban Anglo-Catholic parish for about 10 years, and we got to know many openly gay Episcopalians who are anything but frivolous, definitely including clergy. Or think about Rowan Wiliams: he doesn’t seem to know just what he thinks about gay bishops, but he sure is frivolous. Gay isn’t the issue, frivolity is, the more I think about it.
One of my issues with Msgr Steenson, though, is that I have a certain sense of frivolity. Just read the egoism and grandiosity implicit in his March 22, 2012 interview at Virtue Online. This is probably the basic concern I have — Steenson is one wing of the movement that left TEC pretty much exclusively over LGBT, but there’s been no fuller re-examination of what the real problem within TEC is. You can take the bishop out of TEC, but you can’t take the frivolity out of the bishop.
John,
You do seem angry in some of your posts (although not the last couple!), which is why I asked the question in the first place. Of course, the written word is notoriously bad at conveying emotional nuance, and a phrase that conveys mild irritation when spoken, can convey something far stronger when written.
It’s entirely reasonable to have reservations about the Ordinariates, wherever they happen to be constituted, and educated people may differ. It’s even possible to be part of an Ordinariate and to have disagreements with how it is governed, and I know people who are in that situation. Now that I understand your concerns I have more sympathy with them.
Of course, as someone who is neither Anglican nor RC, it really isn’t my business!
@Stephen: Indeed, you might want to express WHY and WHAT presses you on this blog? Myself, I am of course a onetime Irish cradle Catholic, who has been an Anglican now for many years, and I am pressed both historically and theologically. But then I am also an old “theolog”.
I am always seeking a better biblical-theological understanding – as one really Reformed and Reformational – Ecclesia semper reformada est. BUT, I am too always an Anglican! 
Quite happy to explain myself. I was Anglican until my mid teens, became an atheist, then became Roman Catholic in my late 20′s. I am now on my way, in my mid 60′s to being received, at some point in the not too distant future, into the Orthodox church. My reasons for leaving the Roman Catholic Church are personal and very painful, but if you wish to know them I will elucidate.
I follow Fr Smuts’ blog because I find his selection of news, on matters Anglican, RC and Archaeological to be eclectic and always interesting. I also find myself broadly in agreement with Fr Smuts on a wide range of issues, and find him to be a very courteous host. It’s a place I like to visit, on the whole, barring the comments sections sometimes.
I have a lasting affection for the Anglican Church of my youth, and for the Roman Catholic Church which nurtured me for over 3 decades – I have not severed all ties! I believe that the Ordinariate is an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and will bear fruit in ways that nobody has yet imagined. And yet, I know that there are problems in the nascent Ordinariates around the world, and some people have what seem to me to be very legitimate concerns. Sometimes they are difficult to distinguish from those who think the Ordinariate is pointless because “well we’re all Christians really”, and those, more troublesome, who perch like gargoyles on a church tower, waiting to pounce on every little problem and proclaim that it is a clear example of why the Ordinariate is an abomination.
Howzat for a summa?
Thank you Stephen. It’s comments like yours that makes the whole blogging thing worthwhile! Oh, and as for the comments on the blog, sadly yes, things have a tendency to go south rather rapidly in/on the blogosphere. It kinda come with the territory.
@Stephen: Thanks to share, this always helps for us to really understand where someone is coming from, I mean we all have a so-called “religious” history. As I have said too, not too many years back I was really thinking myself about going to Orthodoxy, I am actually close to their Christology and their Trinitarian doctrine of the Father’s monarchy, and their view of the “filoque”, etc. But I just cannot follow their lack of biblical imputation, indeed Adam is the Federal Head of the race, (Rom. 5). I also see a doctrine of Traducianism, I know I am my father’s son (the belief that parents transmit the soul as well as the physical body of their offspring). And both Tertullian and Augustine found support in it for the doctrine of original sin, but not strictly to creation. And too I must confess when I was thinking of going to the EO, I was just really mad at the Anglican Communion, CoE, etc. And I was an Evangelical many years ago first (well over 40 now), after my own Pauline/Augustinian conversion! This was major, and has always been deep inside me! And of course not to mention something of always enjoying both Calvin and even Barth! Reading thru Barth’s CD once in my life was a major and personal achievement! And also I should not forget my love for the Wesley brothers! Always really Evangelical Anglicans, themselves. And how can I forget Dr. Luther!
Yes, I am really much more of an Anglican Evangelical Reformed/reformational! Though, as I keep writing, I really do see it as both a via-media: “catholic & reformed”, both ‘Word & Sacrament’! 
The way I see it, is that we true lovers of Chist, have much more in common than not! Here the Incarnation should really pull us all together, ‘In Christ’!
Btw Stephen: I was an Anglo-Catholic for not a few years in my Christian history. I have been reading John Henry Newman for at least 30 years! I have a great older book on Newman…Newman the Theologian, by J.H.Walgrave, O.P., of course a Roman Catholic, 378 pages, Geoffrey Chapman, London 1960. The depth of this book is Newman’s doctrine of development. But in many ways, I really prefer Newman the Anglican, I have his Parochial and Plain Sermons (Anglican). Newman lost many of his close Anglican friends after his Roman conversion, in many ways he never had a certain fervor again! He was always then rather exhausted it seems, and often without joy! (See John Henry Newman, His Inner Life, by Father Zeno, O.F.M., Ignatius) But of course he was a great man, and shouldered on, into all his Roman ups and downs! I say this to show that I still love many Roman Catholic writers and theolog’s! And certainly Newman as one foremost!
Sorry, mistyped, OLA is in San Antonio instead of San Diego — my California default processor apparently kicked in.
“And if our Anglo-Catholic Ordinariate parish goes poof, would we then think it an option to join the guitar and tambourine bunch down the street? I don’t think so, we’d more likely find an Episcopal parish again.”
On the one hand, an absolute “no” to tambourines and guitars; on the other, a potential “yes” to a return to communion with those who promote priestesses and perversion. This is one Hell of a Catholic ecclesiology, even for an Anglican.
The real Church is always historically both “wheat & tares”…the Church visible and invisible, but certainly it is by God, ‘One, Holy, Catholic & Apostolic’ reality! But, here we simply must press into Holy Scipture itself…2 Tim. 2: 19-21. Even the best of Vatican II on the Church sees many in the Body of Christ outside of the Visible Catholic Church! Here I speak mostly of those not “churched”, but by God’s grace, themselves “elect” ‘In Christ’. And only God in Christ knows them that are His! I am not speaking in some Rahnerist idea, but those Christians who know and love Christ, but I have chosen not to fellowship in the historical churches, for many reasons. Quakers, etc., I am thinking of those like Robert Barclay, etc. I wonder how many Anglican and Catholic churchmen, have read a line from this great man? John Wesley did!
But wait a sec — aren’t traditionalist Catholics bent out of shape just about as much by female Catholic readers, EMHCs, etc? Seems there are just about as many ladies abut the altar in the Catholic Church as there are among the liberal Protestants — and it’s really just a legalism to insist they aren’t “priestesses”. That’s one of the issues that’s making me slowly rethink the Ordinariate — anyone who thinks there would be substantial differences between a little splinter sub-denomination run by a few dozen ex-Episcopal priests and TEC itself isn’t reasoning clearly.
“But wait a sec — aren’t traditionalist Catholics bent out of shape just about as much by female Catholic readers, EMHCs, etc?”
Some are, some aren’t. I regret them, and as a Byzantine Catholic can happily avoid them, but they hardly rise to the level, or sink to the depths of embracing priestesses and perversion.
Well, I dunno, one thing I see here is people in various boutique sub-denominations — Byzantine Catholic strikes me as an older, and perhaps more successful, version of what the Ordinariate would like to be someday — but there are Western Eastern Orthodox, continuing Anglicans of 25 different flavors, so on and so forth. And every one of them figures they’ve got the Truth, and the splinter-adherent next door doesn’t! I can’t buy that version.
haha, “Western Eastern Orthodox”
Well, John, as a cradle Catholic of the Trad variety, who never stopped practising the Faith – even under Cardinal Mahony (and despite the best efforts of the IHM nuns and sundry other official malefactors) – and who owes his retention of that Faith to his parents, his earliest confessors (Cardinal McIntyre and the Russian Catholic Fr. Wilcock, S.J.), his experiences with St. Mary of the Angels, and other things, I can tell you that there is only one reason to become or to stay a Catholic: because Catholicism – for all the vagaries of its clerical and lay members – is true. If you do not believe that, you should not enter the Ordinariate, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, or any of the myriad Eastern rites in the SoCal area. If you do, you must not let any power on Earth – not priest or bishop or your own situation – stop you. Just reading an interesting post: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/07/i-fought-the-church-and-the-church-won/
You see, it is not about the clergy – it is about you, and your soul. If you believe that reception of Communion in union with the Successor of St. Peter is necessary for your Salvation, then you may have to fight your way through hordes of female Eucharistic ministers (like far dowdier versions of Klingsor’s maidens!) to get it – though there are alternatives (and of can become an expert line-jumper!). But if you do not believe that, then it really is not worth the bother – find a church service with which you are comfortable, and be comforted. God gives us gifts, but He does not always make them easy to attain.
Hear, hear! A hard cross to bear, not a soft cushion!