Ecclesiastical bibs and bobs

• Blogging ecumenism rocks. From an entry in the blog of Fr Dan Martins, an Episcopalian who doesn’t hate the other side in his denomination’s split and has explained how his church has broken its own rules trying to get restarted in his old home.
• Another denominational row only this time not about essentials: the Russian Orthodox split in England. I detect the pong of anti-Russianism as if the immigrants and their clergy are Borises and Natashas (cartoon Cold War spies). The first Russian Orthodox service (the Saturday vigil) I ever went to (I’d been to Ukrainian Greek Catholic Liturgies before) was at Ennismore Gardens.
• Another ex-CEC parish is joining the AWRV. More.
• Judaism: Keep in mind that Rabbinical Judaism since Jamnia bears only a slight resemblance to the historical faith of the Old Testament and of Ancient Israel. Your shul, I’m afraid, is only a de-messianized version of Old Testament teaching and life, a form of “spiritualized Judaism” with no temple, no sacrifice and no Messiah. Before 3pm on Good Friday the head of the church was Caiaphas; afterwards it was St Peter. You can argue that most of Protestantism is a similarly edited-down Christianity: no temple, no altar on which to plead and make present the Sacrifice, no priest standing in for the High Priest in heaven (when we talk about ‘Fr X our priest’ we’re using shorthand like when we say the Mass is a sacrifice).