Ecclesiastical bibs and bobs

• Patrimony: Bishop Barnes on differing British and American Anglo-Catholic attitudes to the Prayer Book. More here and here.
• An e-mail conversation about the Telegraph’s coverage of the ACA saying yes to the Holy Father’s offer. We also talk about the underreported story of most of an American diocese (including the bishop, who was behind the move) of the Nestorian Church (the native church of Iraq) converting to Rome a few years ago.
• Talking to Fr Robert Hart and company. I don’t reflexively bash them but their long-standing position (Grafton’s) is an earlier version of Episcopalianism — so what’s to stop history repeating itself? — not Catholicism.
• Fr Laurence Wells on American RCs. 1. Real social justice (not the modern left) + the legit liturgical movement + orthodoxy = Catholic. 2. The old immigrant-labour-Democrat tie is hard to break (why many American churchmen think the party line is doctrine) but you’re right that the party line is not doctrine. 3. As I say, Pope Benedict had better have the ex-ACs’ back; they’ll need it!
• Scratch a libprot and find a nativist. But I appreciate the point about the inconsistency of hiring and giving benefits to the divorced and remarried. A counter-argument from my libertarianism: the divorced and remarried are consenting adults. Not so an orphaned or abandoned child the state tries to order the church to put into a homosexual couple’s home, against the church’s teachings.