A.S Haley: TEC Files in Supreme Court Pawley’s Island Appeal

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Excerpt:
What is even more significant than the news that ECUSA filed a brief in support of the petition is that the Diocese of South Carolina did not. As I analyzed that possibility in this previous post, the case would now be fraught with legal complexities as to who can properly argue against the lower court's decision, should the Court grant the petition for review. Fortunately, however, given that the Court has denied review without comment in all the other church cases it has recently been asked to look at, the odds are more than 99-1 that it will deny review here, as well.

Denial of review will not remove the current bone of contention between the Presiding Bishop and the Bishop of South Carolina, the Rt. Rev. Mark Lawrence. She and her Chancellor will undoubtedly see the Diocese's refusal to join in support of the petition as a betrayal of the dissident parishioners at Waccamaw. No doubt the failure to join (even though, technically speaking, it would not be the Bishop's decision alone to make, but would require the consent of the diocesan standing committee) will be added to the growing dossier of evidence to be submitted by Chancellor Beers to the Title IV Review Committee in the near future, as grounds for first the inhibition and then the deposition of Bishop Lawrence without a trial, for alleged "abandonment of the Communion of this Church." (Bishop Lawrence's failure to attend the upcoming meeting of the House of Bishops that starts in Texas at the end of this week will of course be regarded as yet another such piece of evidence.) the rest

There will be no neutral or middle ground; it will be like being in the middle of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. As far as the Presiding Bishop will be concerned, one will be "either with her, or against her."