House Built On Sand?

Here's where I'm heading over the Ordinariates. I'm having a very hard time getting past the idea that Anglicanorum coetibus was issued based on two mistaken assumptions:

1. The flawed assumption behind "continuing Anglicanism", pointed out most effectively by Douglas Bess in Divided We Stand, that large numbers of Anglicans (especially US Episcopalians) would leave their denomination due to its increasingly liberal positions. While a number of "continuing Anglican" denominations emerged in the decade or so following the 1977 Congress of St Louis, Bess is correct in noting that The Episcopal Church hardly noticed, and the "continuing" groups remained small, while they redivided among themselves in very Protestant fashion.
2. The assumption, promoted by Jeffrey Steenson and Episcopal Bishop Clarence Pope in their 1993 meeting with Cardinal Ratzinger that resulted in the draft of Anglicanorum coetibus, that the disaffected Anglicans (given Steenson's and Pope's affiliation, mainly US Episcopalians) would wish to become Catholic. Steenson and Pope continued the wildly excessive estimate of potential interest and were unrealistic in not recognizing the Protestant nature of Episcopalianism.

The two mistaken assumptions, it seems to me, explain the Ordinariates we see in 2015. Worldwide membership is in the mid four figures. The most successful North American parishes, still small by diocesan Catholic standards, entered the Ordinariates in their present size from earlier jurisdictions, either Anglican Use or other Anglican. No comparable parish has emerged de novo, and the groups started since 2012 are struggling, with those in the Washington, DC and Philadelphia areas pressed into merging.

Meanwhile, posts and comments on the Ordinariate News blog reflect a disturbing tendency, first, deliberately to reject grownup topics like pledging, budgeting, vocations, and building maintenance, and second, gratuitously to attack Episcopalians -- a case of the mote in your brother's eye, it seems to me. David Murphy, now on the Board of the Anglican Use Society, is, astonishingly, a leader in this tendency. Forgive me, but the appointment of Mr Murphy and some like-minded individuals to the Board of the AUS can only contribute to the idea that Anglo-Papalism in its various forms is something basically overspecialized, silly, immature, and eccentric. The adults in the room need to take note of this.

I'm moving increasingly to the view that joining the US-Canadian Ordinariate as of 2015 is not a good option for any group, including my friends at the St Mary of the Angels parish. I now feel they need to consider seriously and prayerfully what their best options will be when their legal issues are resolved.