What was your situation, if you don’t mind me asking? If you would prefer to reply private mail, that’s fine too. Thanks.
As far as I can tell, in 1994 Richmond neither the diocesan nor the suffragan of Richmond wanted to deal with it. And then a couple of years ago, there still were enough fading-away-on-the-left-horizon clerics that there would be great distress if a conservative Catholic with a wife, to boot, were admitted to the process.
And they took an unconscionable amount of time to reach this conclusion (18 months of broken appintments!) and then to disguise it as an assessment of my suitability. The most telling thing was that as he turned me down the (drum roll) vicar of vocations said that if I’d come to him as an unmarried man in my early twenties he would have recommended me to the Jesuits or the Dominicans.
And my pastor had all along suggested that my being associated with our orthodox parish probably counted against me.
At this point I feel about it the way I feel about a Ph.D. I just don’t have the ability to tolerate the BS required.