A snake-belly low parish like St. James would not, for an instant, consider joining the Ordinariate. They seem to me to be, at heart, Evangelicals/Pentecostals who like a bit of very unadorned absolutely Protestant liturgy to class things up a la Newport Beach.Blessed Sacrament Placentia raises its own set of issues. It hosted the Newman group-in-formation before it was received into the OCSP, when it moved to a Catholic parish. At that time (2011-12), the Episcopal rector was on the verge of retirement and from what I was told, he was sympathetic to Anglicanorum coetibus and possibly even considering going into the OCSP after he retired. However, neither he nor the parish made any move in that direction. I believe that for a time, it hosted an ACNA parish that used its worship space, and it also was placed under a conservative bishop, rather than Bp Bruno.A more likely candidate would be (would have been?) Blessed Sacrament, Placentia. Their problem, though, is with a Pope, not with "popery".
This is clearly the sort of Episcopal parish that must have been in the minds of Bp Pope, Fr//Bp/Msgr Steenson, and Cardinal Ratzinger when they mooted an Anglican personal prelature, but as a practical matter, there was little actual demand.
My regular correspondent had several comments.
I would note that there was a wide discrepancy in the percentage of members of ACA/ACCC parishes who entered the OCSP. In some cases the uptake was 90%, in others the percentage was reversed. I do not think this was because of the inherent bias of the membership of any given parish; I think it was because of leadership. In many parishes significant numbers who had left the Catholic church for Anglicanism were reconciled. That's a sales job.Later,In other parishes, clergy could not seem to make a convincing case to those who had regarded themselves as Catholic their entire lives and only needed some clarification on the Petrine claims. Members of these "continuing" denominations had already left mainstream Anglicanism in protest over numerous issues. They could see that their microdenomination had failed to thrive and faced eventual extinction. If their pastor could not make the case that their values would be preserved and nourished in the Catholic church I think that's on him, not some inherent Anglican resistance.
I have probably made previous reference to the ACCC parish in Victoria, BC, whose rector was completely committed to taking the parish into the Ordinariate; indeed, he took the position that since the ACCC synod had voted nearly unanimously for this course of action it was unnecessary for the parish to vote on the subject. When one of the assistant clergy openly suggested that it was worth at least having a parish discussion he was pronounced "excommunicated." This was later rescinded but the clergyman in question left the parish, along with some of its members. But the larger part remained.Still later,Then, after the OCSP was erected and the rector submitted his dossier, he was informed that he had been denied a nulla osta on the grounds of delict of schism. At this point he declared that he would be remaining in the ACCC, and while about a dozen laypeople (and five clergy) ultimately left and formed the BlJHN group in Victoria, a large majority of the congregation then decided to remain in the ACCC with him. Meanwhile on the BC mainland only ten people from the four parishes there followed their rector (he served all four parishes, with a total membership of about a hundred) into the Church. Again, this cannot be a story about Anglican predispositions.
So I would estimate that the number of "walk-ins" to the OCSP in its four years of existence--those who have become Catholic, or been reconciled to the Church, other than as a member of a previously existing group led in by a former pastor--probably number fewer than a hundred. More than 1,200 adults were baptised and/or confirmed at the Easter Vigil in the Diocese of Brooklyn last year. By this standard the evangelisation effort of the OCSP has been an even more massive failure than its membership numbers suggest, and they are pretty low.
