CathInfo.com

One of the Nine told me personally that he heard Bishop Kelly say one time, "We can't say they're valid because then people might go to them."

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Bishop Kelly also decided that the CMRI were a non-Catholic (Old Catholic) sect because Shuckardt sought ordination/consecration from the Old Catholic Daniel Brown.  Apart from the fact that getting Orders from an Old Catholic doesn't make you an Old Catholic, CMRI asked Brown (born a Catholic) to make a public abjuration before conferring the Orders, and he did so.  Whether the Orders were valid or not is a different matter.  But I see absolutely zero justification for this allegation that they were a non-Catholic sect.

Recall that this was 1971, where most US Catholics were still unaware of the seminary that +Lefebvre had just started (which was a very quiet operation in the beginning) and before there were any +Thuc-line bishops.  CMRI had an elderly pre-V2-ordained priest offering Mass for them, but he retired and then another one left, etc.  So they got to the point that they wanted a more regular situation in terms of having priests.

Of course, the Shuckardt scandals tarred the reputation of the CMRI, and they contemplated changing their name to distance themselves from all that, but then-Father McKenna eventually told them not to bother.