STILL DEFIANT

The new "Anglican" diocese is still at it. They just put out a notice on their website showing their defiance of the federal court. Find their press release here .

On November 11, the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina filed a petition with the federal court in Charleston asking the court to enforce its permanent injunction against the organization that purported to be the Diocese of South Carolina. The Sept. 19 order of the federal court recognized the names and emblems of the historic diocese as property of the Episcopal diocese. That order forbade the breakaway contingent from using the historic names and emblems.

In the first place, in their announcement, the breakaways refused to use the legal names of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina. Instead, they referred to the real Diocese of South Carolina as "the Episcopal Church in South Carolina." In fact, the legal names of the diocese are Diocese of South Carolina and Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina whether the schismatics like it or not.

The statement also referred to instances on its website "pertaining to its history." In fact, the federal court ruled very clearly and strongly that the Episcopal Diocese alone is the historic diocese that started in 1785. The breakaway organization actually dates from the time of the schism, October 15, 2012. It has no history before that. It has no legal right to claim anything before Oct. 15, 2012. 

The EDSC petition asks the court to order the breakaways to find another name than "Anglican Diocese of South Carolina" because that name is still too close to the legal historic diocese's name and causes confusion about trademarks. Of course, the ADSC is not really Anglican since it is not in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. It and its parent, the Anglican Church in North America are not members of the Anglican Communion. But, that is another matter. For now, the Episcopalians want the court to order the "Anglicans" to find another name for their entity.

If the tone of the new statement from the breakaway organization is any indication of what is to come, we can expect to see a fight. I suspect this is part of their overall strategy of deny and delay. They know they have lost the war. They lost claim to the historic diocese as well as the bulk of the local parishes. What they need to do now is to form a viable entity to go on as a fundamentalist "Anglican" presence in lower South Carolina. For this, they need to remove as many communicants as possible from the 29 parishes that will be returning to the authority of the Episcopal bishop. Playing the victim promotes unification among the schismatics. If so, it is in their interest to make the Episcopal side take dramatic measures to eject the illegal occupants from the diocesan and parochial properties that legally belong to the Episcopal Church.

I expect the next step will be for the breakaways to file a response to EDSC's petition of Nov. 11. This should appear soon. Given Judge Gergel's reputation as a non-nonsense and efficient judge, I think we can expect some strong action on his part to enforce his Sept. 19 permanent injunction.