Several parish meetings were held during December 2011 and January 2012, in which this question was formally or informally discussed. I don't believe anyone kept detailed notes or minutes, and I'm not aware of any recording. (If anyone has any of these, I'd naturally be interested in anything that would help complete the record.) Msgr William Stetson at the time was the representative of Los Angeles Archbishop Gomez, and later was referred to by Msgr Steenson, the Ordinary designated in January 2012, as his representative as well. Msgr Stetson was thus our most authoritative source.
The memory of several people who attended a December 2011 meeting was that Msgr Stetson made statements to the effect that (as one who attended the meeting summarized it to me) "he doesn't check passports at the communion rail and [we] took that to mean that communion would be open to Anglicans at a Catholic Mass at St. Mary's." My own understanding of the guidance we'd received from Msgr Stetson was that the Ordinariate priest would have some sort of pastoral option available that would allow him to give communion to non-Catholics remaining in the parish.
This, of course, contravenes actual Catholic doctrine, which simply says that non-Catholics who have not been properly received into the Church via the sacraments are not eligible for Catholic communion. Whether the parish and the Ordinariate would actually have gotten away with giving Catholic communion to non-Catholics at St Mary's is now a moot point. In our defense, and specifically in defense of Fr Kelley, I would say that although we had had a pretty thorough catechism throughout the summer of 2011, the specific issue of whether a priest could override this particular doctrine didn't come up. (The full Catholic Catechism is a very thick volume.) We were still Anglicans, and Fr Kelley had not yet gone through the additional training that would be needed to become a Catholic priest in the Ordinariate. In that matter, we were relying in good faith on the opinions of Msgr Stetson, a formidable individual well known in conservative Catholic circles, who had been designated by the archbishop to address precisely this sort of question.
At the time this was specifically discussed, there was not yet an Ordinary in place, and I don't believe Msgr Steenson has addressed this issue at any time following his designation. Revisiting the issue from the perspective of events in the subsequent 18 months, this is, from my point of view, one more piece of a puzzle that's given me a picture of people making things up as they go along, winging it over important matters, and letting people with intentions formed on good faith fall through the cracks.
The bottom line from the parish's standpoint, it seems to me, is that it clearly intended to provide pastoral care for parishioners who would not become Catholic, and it relied in good faith on what it took to be the valid opinion of the Catholic authorities, however misguided this reliance may have been. Should there be an opportunity for reconciliation now, of course, it would not be an option to provide Catholic communion to non-Catholics. I've heard ideas on what might actually be done from several people, which all involve having an Anglican priest come in to provide communion to those parishioners in some fashion, whether at a side altar during the Catholic service, or as a separate parish using the St Mary's building for its own Anglican mass.
This would, naturally, have to be worked out between Catholic and Anglican authorities. It's important to recognize that the elected vestry of the parish is prepared to find a way to resolve this problem in good faith, should reconciliation be a real possibility.
