NOTES,  3 JUNE 2022

5:00 p.m. EDT.  Greetings, blog reader, on Friday, June 3, 2022. As of this writing, there is no news from the South Carolina Supreme Court, or at least there is no new announcement on their website. Some of their postings appear a day late. It has been nearly a month (May 5) since the eight parishes petitioned the SCSC for rehearing of the 20 April 2022 decision. There has been no response from SCSC. It has been a week (May 27) since the TEC side filed a motion with SCSC for partial remittitur. They asked the court to remit orders to the circuit court for the return to TEC of the six parishes that did not contest the 20 April decision. There has been no reaction from SCSC. One might expect responses to appear soon. Odds are the court will deny a rehearing and will remit their decision to the lower court.

As I opined in a recent post, one should not let the euphoria of an apparent "final" court decision skew one's vision of the future. Alas, the schism and its legal war have not reached finality and closure, far from it. Eight parishes are fighting the SCSC decision. Some have said they will not go quietly. The first parish (St. John's) to indicate it would hand over the property to the Episcopal diocese has also said it will not do so until there is a court order. No property or asset has actually changed hands. At this point we really do not know when this will happen. 

There is still a vast amount of difficult legal work to do to reach closure. Moreover, the Episcopal side would do well to remember who their legal battlefield opponent is. One important thing we have learned in the course of the schism is that Alan Runyan is a master of tactics in litigation. When the 2017 decision came out, he refused to accept defeat and began a brilliant counter-offensive. 

He conducted a nearly five year campaign to undo the 2017 decision. In the end, he succeeded in getting 15 more parishes out of TEC control. They just happened to include all of the large and politically powerful parishes of the old diocese (except one, Grace). And, they just happened to be the ones he represented himself (St. Helena, St. Michael, St. Philip, and Church of the Cross). Some people have characterized the 2022 SCSC decision as a win for TEC. I disagree.

In my view, the real winner of Apr. 20, 2022, was Alan Runyan. He managed to get all the big churches, save one, out of the 2017 order to return to the Episcopal Church. He snatched a remarkable victory in 2022 from the jaws of defeat of 2017. Runyan continues to represent the Anglican diocese and 9 of the 36 parishes that made the lawsuit against TEC in 2013. One of the nine is St. John's, of Johns Island. It is preparing to hand over the property but has said it will not do so until the SCSC remits its Apr. 20 decision to the circuit court.

Meanwhile, we seem to be inundated these days with bad news, so much so that one may dread to turn on the television or computer. Rampant gun violence is a man-made plague in our American society; and it is getting worse by the day. No one knows this better than the people of Charleston. There are more guns than people in America. More than one hundred Americans are killed by guns every single day. In my opinion, the base of the problem is the Second Amendment. It must be repealed. Nothing else has worked. Nothing else will work. It is all a lot of little band-aids on an enormous uniquely American cancer.

Then, beyond America, there is that other man-made disaster, the Russian attack on Ukraine. It has been one hundred days of hell. Unable to sweep to a quick victory, the Russians are now resorting to brutal and barbaric bludgeoning of the population. This is a crime against humanity and the perpetrators must be held accountable. This evil must not stand.

On top of all the man-made evil, one must not forget we are still in the grips of the worst pandemic in a century. In fact, in the last few weeks, figures are rising for new cases and hospitalizations across America. Already over six million people in the world have died of COVID-19, including one million Americans. In all, over one-half a billion people in the world have contracted the covid virus. Some people are ready to declare the pandemic over and life back to normal. This would be much too premature.

Then, on top of all that, the economy is making strange gyrations. While there are plenty of good jobs available, inflation is taking off as a rocket. The price of gasoline has doubled in the last couple of years and seems to be exploding just in the last few weeks. There are predictions of six dollar a gallon prices by August. This is bound to have a marked trickle-down effect of raising the prices on practically everything else. Even if one can find the desired items on the shelf, they are likely to cost considerably more than they did last year. People living on fixed incomes will find themselves making hard choices of what they will do without.

While we are beset with woes, we must not allow ourselves to be vanquished by the darkness. We will find a way through. We have our faith and we have each other. And, there are pieces of good news all around us if we only look for them.

Who cannot be inspired by Her Majesty, the Queen? Even an ardent republican as myself must give full admiration to Queen Elizabeth who has done her duty brilliantly for seventy years. She has seen it all, and she did so with steady resolve and courage. No one could have done that job better. We Episcopalians must remember that she is also the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, our mother church. She has done that job well too, for seventy years.

Now, back to the schism, the main focus of this blog. After all these long years, the broad parameters of a settlement loom on the distant horizon. There is still a vast amount of work to do, but if all that we know now goes well, one day down the road all this unpleasantness will be over. People just need to be patient and to bear in mind the legal war is still going on and will continue for a long time to come.

Finally, to end on a note of levity, here is a picture that caught my eye. It used to be that some things were understood.