Same thing, the week before my wife and I were finally received at Easter, we met with Fr Mott at Our Mother of Good Counsel, and we chatted about various things, but the one issue he finally steered us to was the authority of the Pope. I don't know if priests do this with catechumens who haven't been baptized, but my guess is that it's a good thing to probe with "continuing Anglicans" -- look at the little dance all the TAC bishops did over signing the Catholic Catechism at the Portsmouth meeting. "Well, all we meant was that the Catechism is the most complete expression of Christianity. Didn't have anything to do with the authority of the Pope, after all. We're just gonna keep on keepin' on here, thanks very much!"
It seems pretty clear that in the view of actual Catholics, one of the key identifiers is to accept the authority of the Pope. This, again, is part of the general unreality among the "continuing Anglicans" who want to confuse small-c catholic with capital-C Catholic. You can say you believe all sorts of things: transubstantiation, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, mortal sin, the importance of Confession, the need to attend mass, no ordination of women, but none of those makes you Catholic without accepting the authority of the Pope.
Or, for that matter, Fr Mott in a different context recounted the story of a professor he had in seminary, a Jew, who nevertheless taught New Testament and apparently understood St Paul as well as anyone Fr Mott had ever known. The problem was, Fr Mott said, that the guy didn't believe a word of it. This accounts for some part of the distaste I feel for "continuing Anglicans" and all their works. They'll sign the Catechism, but when push comes to shove, they don't believe a word of it.
