Jeanne and I were Anglican Use Catholics in L.A. without a parish. It was a disappointing position to be in. It was in L.A. that the Anglican Use had its origin -- and L.A. is one of the largest, if not the largest, populated Archdioceses in the USA [it is] -- so you might expect at least one teeny, tiny parish ... but no. Nothing.I would go beyond this to say that in reflecting on his account, I realized that the process of taking St Mary of the Angels into the Catholic Church began in the context of the 1977 Congress of St Louis, with discussions involving Cardinal Law through the early 1980s. By 1984 -- seven years later -- all of two St Mary's parishioners made it into Anglican Use, although by then a mildly successful Anglican Use parish had been established in Las Vegas.We gravitated toward RC Latin Traditionalism, since that was the closest to our Catholic training and tastes. Jeanne and I moved to Bakersfield 10 years ago (2006). (Jeanne and I taught Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in L.A. for 21 years after we got back to L.A. from Marquette in Milwaukee. We taught at various places before and since. LMU has been steadily losing its Catholic identity since Vatican II. We definitely did our best to help it retain its proper Tradition.)
My wife and I took eight months to become Catholic via RCIA.
Whether or not Cardinal Manning or Cardinal Mahony was opposed to Anglican Use, the problem I have is whether diocesan bishops were friendly or not, the overall numbers have never been enough to command any bishop's attention. I hear now that Bishop Vann has been ducking out of commitments to attend Newman-related events in Irvine. Perhaps even someone so friendly to Anglican Use as Bp Vann has begun to balance the demands on his time against the numbers coming into the Church via the Anglican path.
In fact, it would be interesting if a bishop ever were to ask how many ex Episcopalians were coming into his diocese in a given year via RCIA vs Anglicanorum coetibus.
