In his view, the CEC had some bad bishops, some of whom have moved on to be bishops, bad or not, elsewhere. The rank and file among the priesthood didn't necessarily reflect the conduct at the top, and he sees no reason why priests in such situations should not be considered for ordination in one of the Ordinariates.
My concern is with the appearance of how things have developed in Houston -- Houston states a "policy" in various informal ways that it will not ordain priests who are not coming in with groups -- when it will manifestly do this. Houston states a "policy" in various informal ways that the Ordinariates apply only to certain Anglicans -- when it seems to make exceptions fairly frequently.
The result is that, with a total roster of priests numbering well under a hundred, a remarkable proportion seem to be exceptions -- priests without groups, priests whose Anglican background is at best pro forma.
Presumably it's who you know.
UPDATE: Here's the e-mail from the priest I mentioned above, slightly edited to maintain his privacy:
Let me say two things about my experience in the CEC in the late ‘90s.One, to be blunt, the CEC was always a personality cult that centered around our “patriarch”, Randolf Adler. Obeisance was paid to Abp. Adler for his founding of the denomination, for its rapid growth, and for the special prophetic “anointing” that all assumed that he possessed. Since the CEC was a personality cult, it all came crashing down when Randy himself went off the tracks in the mid “oughts” (2000’s), and a big church split ensued. That is the shorthand; further research will give you the expanded history, to be sure.
Two, there were many clergymen of the CEC who were better trained and more-legitimately ordained than Randy himself. Our own bishop, Richard Lipka, had been a cradle Roman Catholic, who was trained at the Vatican, was “abd" (all but dissertation) in psychology at Johns Hopkins and, had he not had a charismatic experience, and had he not married and started a family, might have been considered for a Catholic bishopric. He boasted that he had taken a parish in Baltimore from 25 to 700 members while he was a priest in the Episcopal Church during the 1970s and ‘80s. Let the record show whether this was true or not, but I am inclined to believe it. We . . . had priests who had graduated from Lutheran, Methodist and Anglican seminaries.
Once he became a bishop in the CEC, Lipka took the bully pulpit by the horns and, having led the majority of a medium-sized Episcopal congregation out the door in reaction to Pres. Bp. Edmund Browning’s leftist pronouncements, and the apostasy of the Episcopal Church itself, making bold claims of imminent explosive growth, reduced that thriving parish by two-thirds within ten years, before he hightailed it . . . back to Maryland, from whence he hailed. He was a stubborn man, who would not listen to his fellow priests’ precautions about ordaining unqualified men too soon, but who would not budge when it came to minor issues like moving our gathering from one expensive rental space to a cheaper one. Ordination to the episcopacy, and the arrogance that derived therefrom, was the worst thing that could have ever happened to Rich Lipka’s ministry. He left the CEC when the scandal blew up in 2006, and is a bishop of the ACNA in the Chesapeake Bay area now, as far as I know, if he is not retired.
All heretofore notwithstanding, it is my opinion that there are many men in so-called “fringe” denominations, who have either sensed a calling to the ordained ministry, but lack no access to the major players, or who have fallen afoul of their own hierarchy, for one reason or another, who have done their level best to be trained for the ministry, who have pastored a flock, and who have approached the ordinariate, or some other mainstream ecclesial group in good faith, and who now offer themselves for catholic/orthodox ordination and who sometimes bring along with them their congregations, however small, to the greater Church. If these men have taken to the theology and practice of the Anglican patrimony, and have used the Book of Common Prayer as a primer to a more catholic faith and worship, then they should at the very least be considered seriously for ordination within the ordinariate, no matter where they have come from. Consideration is no guarantee of ordination, but surely the missional nature of the Church catholic would call for that consideration, even if there be a need for remedial scholarship and practical training.
