A LETTER TO THIS EDITOR, 22 MARCH 2023
In my last two blog posts, I brought up the issue of the ownership of the historic (pre-schism) diocese. Three and a half years ago, the federal court in Charleston declared that the Episcopal Church was hierarchical and that the Episcopal diocese was the only heir of the historic Diocese of South Carolina. Moreover, the judge issued a permanent Injunction explicitly barring the new breakaway association from using the names, symbols, and marks of the pre-schism diocese. In other words, the breakaway contingent could not legally claim in any way to be the continuation of the pre-schism Diocese of South Carolina. The new association had to be taken to court twice to enforce this decree and was found in contempt of court. Yet, after all this, at their annual convention this month, that association, now called the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina, apparently remained in defiance of the Injunction.
Today we have a letter from one of this blog's readers who kept an eagle's eye on the various proceedings and documents posted from the convention. His thoughts are well worth considering:
Dear Ron: I was curious of the Anglicans' convention and looked through the documents and found a lot of references to the historic Diocese of South Carolina. In one of the documents they used the names Diocese of South Carolina and Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina. They mentioned bishops of the historic diocese. They used words of the past bishops of the diocese. They mentioned the division of the diocese and the creation of the upper South Carolina diocese in 1922. They mentioned the articles of incorporation in the 70's. They really made a lot of references showing to the public that they are the historic diocese but, of course, avoided mentioning the Episcopal Church. At the time they mentioned the historic diocese as an independent entity. The cherry on the cake was the historic seal in their official documents. They just missed announcing their convention as the 233rd using "2023 convention" to ignore the reality that this was their 11th convention. They mentioned Edgar simply as bishop of their diocese instead of 2nd bishop.
So sad that they refused to accept reality. Is it not enough for the separatists that the court sided with them after overturning themselves several times and harming the diocese pretty badly? Yet, they want to keep saying that the diocese separated from the Episcopal Church in 2012. They are still announcing this on their website and Facebook page indirectly showing people that their diocese pre-existed 2012.
The Diocese of South Carolina has lost a lot in this and they should take action against this. We are Christians but what is legal is legal and has to stop even if that means going back to court to force the separatists to accept the reality that they are not historic at all, their current bishop is the second bishop, and their past convention was the 11th convention. They need to rewrite all of their constitutions and canons instead of keeping on editing and using the documents of the historic diocese.
Their bishop said "the war is over," but it looks in reality for them it is not over until they completely destroy the historic diocese so they can freely claim that they are the historic diocese.
Yours, Eric Smith
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Thanks, Eric, for sharing your thoughts with which that I am sure many people would agree.
The ball is now in the Episcopal diocese's court. What they will do remains to be seen but I would not hold my breath expecting much to come out of this apparently egregious violation of the federal Injunction. The climate in the war of the schism has changed drastically in the last year or so. The Episcopal diocesan officers seem to value above all peace and an end of the issues around the schism. They have given two clear signals which perhaps encouraged the Anglican diocese to persist in its allusions as the continuation of the old diocese. One came in the "Final Settlement" of last September that allowed the Anglican diocese co-rights to the archives of the pre-schism diocese. Since the Anglican diocese did not exist before 2012, it had no legitimate right to any control over any of the archives of the historic diocese. They are the exclusive property of the Episcopal diocese. By giving them co-rights in the disposition of the archives, the Episcopal diocese gave tacit recognition of the Anglicans' claims to the historic diocese. The second signal, and perhaps the most important, was the declaration that the litigation was over. The only way the Episcopal diocese has achieved any enforcement of the Injunction has been through the court. It had to go to court twice, not once but twice, to get the Anglicans to abide by the Injunction. If the Anglicans know they are not going to hauled into court again, they could choose to disregard the Injunction at will. The Injunction is good only if it is enforced; and the only way it has been enforced in the past is by court action.
However, we are being told that the two bishops have become chatty friends. Bp Edgar even likened they to the Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This is a poor analogy. While those two had polar opposite world views, they were both passionately committed to the same institution, the Court. Edgar and Woodliff-Stanley share no such unifying factor. In fact, the whole history of the schism has been the breakaways' demonization of the Episcopal Church. It has not gone away if the exiting cries of the occupants of the seven parishes returning to the Episcopal diocese last year were any indication. Let's not kid ourselves; the Anglican diocese looks on the Episcopal Church as the enemy and they act on such. Any such idea that the friendship between the two bishops is going to make any substantial change in the character of this schism is ill-founded and naive.
It is imperative for the Episcopal diocese that it protect its legal rights at this point. By refusing to accept that the Episcopal diocese is the one and only heir of the historic diocese, the Anglicans are rejecting the major conclusion of the settlement: exchange of the diocese for the bulk of the parishes. It seems to me the Anglicans have refused and still defiantly refuse to accept this trade off. They are still clinging to the notion that in reality they are heirs of the historic diocese. They are not; and the federal court has said so, three times now. If the Anglicans expect a good-will settlement of this nightmare schism, they must change their attitude about history. They do not own the old diocese; the Episcopal Church does. It is now incumbent on the Episcopal diocese to press this point.
