Since Methodists now have the right to become members of the Ordinariate, I wonder if there would be any UMC congregations that would have an interest in joining it. My guess is that there would not likely be any, but joining it could be something that some of them may want to discern.I think this is a purely theoretical question, for several reasons. I strongly suspect that Methodists were added to the list for clergy-centered reasons, to make favored outlier candidates like Fr Baaten or Fr Treco eligible for ordination without an associated group. If such candidates have the right connections, they'll make it in over mainstream Anglicans without them.
But the process of discernment for a group or parish is also frequently divisive. Methodists don't have a Methodo-Catholic tradition, and anti-Catholic feelings are probably more likely to exist among factions in a Methodist parish. I would imagine that a Methodist parish that was sufficiently upset about the national move would go looking for an alternative similar to breakaway conservative Lutheran or Presbyterian denominations.
According to the USCCB, something like 60,000 baptized Christians are received from other denominations in the US each year. A non-trivial number of these are probably Methodists, and probably far more than would ever come in via Anglicanorum coetibus. And let's face it, the decision to become Catholic is always an individual one.
But finally, defections from liberal denominations once they make supposedly "last straw" moves have always been overestimated -- recall Clarence Pope's 1993 estimate to Cardinal Ratzinger that 250,000 US Episcopalians would come into a personal prelature. Instead, such numbers have never been sufficient even to make the national denominations take other than legal notice.
I don't think Houston will ever hear a peep from any disgruntled Methodists -- and this should be cause for reassessment of what the Ordinariates were meant to do.
