Ecclesiastical bibs and bobs

• Rorate cæli.
• Owen wrote this as part of a criticism but in ways I like it: There are elements within American Orthodoxy that can live with a really big tent when it comes to praxis; they can live with a mid-size to large tent when it comes to teaching or doctrine (so long as folks don’t veer away from ‘mere Christianity’, and as long as folks don’t get into ‘anti-Westernism’). Wrapped up in ethnic and local immemoral custom it works (the Catholic doctrine is underneath it all — sharing with the Theotokos and the saints a participation in the divine life, and an acknowledgement that our participation in that divine life is greatly facilitated “through the prayers of our holy fathers” for example — but not necessarily harped on); it doesn’t spin off into Protestantism and it’s not the uptight anti-Western Western convert scene. (He’s writing about Orthodoxy; I’m not exclusively doing so here.) It has its standards and a tightly knit culture but is not a cult and doesn’t micromanage. As Father Stephen Freeman oft says, “90% of Orthodoxy is just showing up.” If the mere Christianity means a denial of Catholic doctrine and/or nothing but mainline boosterism/moral uplift there’s a problem. His criticism has a point too: If we don’t teach our children to rightly worship God, they will worship something else, and late modernity provides a legion of means to worship ourselves. But even if we do manage to get it ‘right’ with regard to homosexuality, if for pastoral reasons we throw praxis and teaching to the wind, well, I suppose the Mormons get it ‘right’ with regard to homosexuality too. Great. Or the Anglicans have been living in a latitudinarian shell since the 1700s or indeed the 1500s (the ‘Reformation’ was evil) so why wait until now to break up over homosexuality?
• Rome-Moscow relations begin new era.
• Whither the Ukraine? Comments.
• The mainliners and the megachurches are losing people in their 20s but traditional churches that are liturgical churches and smaller evangelical churches seem to be retaining them in greater numbers.
• Summorum Pontificum RC traditionalists are supporting incoming Anglo-Catholics. From Fr Chadwick at Christian Campbell’s.
• Fr Hunwicke: even the most anti-papal factions within Anglicanism are happy to have a Pio Nono on tap when it suits them.