One can but marvel at the madness that drives megalomania. First of all, it knows no boundaries: no matter what the odds or the ultimate cost, everything can be sacrificed so long as the sacrifice is seen as advancing the goal, which is to annihilate anything that appears to be threatening, or that is not already under complete subjugation. And individual megalomania is as nothing compared to the institutional variety, which signals all too often the last stage of an institution’s eclipse. For when the rank and file are too ensconced in their ways to see where their leaders’ follies and delusions are taking them, then the outrages of those leaders grow in proportion as the institution itself declines.
So it would appear to be in South Carolina. Having learned nothing from their experience with an identically framed federal lawsuit in Fort Worth, the Presiding Bishop and her Chancellor have now spotted Provisional Bishop Charles vonRosenberg to an ill-advised and futile gambit in the Charleston Division of the Federal District Court in South Carolina.
Read it all and there are earlier articles here and here
The Fort Worth case was filed in September, 2010. What happened?
Tom Rightmyer, the Texas federal court followed federal case precedent, and did what I expect the federal court in South Carolina to do: it issued a stay of further proceedings in the court until the State court lawsuit had been finally resolved.
When there is a state court proceeding that began before a federal court case involving the same issue (here, the right to use the seal and the marks of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina), the federal court is required by the Anti-Injunction statute to stay all proceedings, pending the resolution of the prior action in State court.
What I find simply amazing is that ECUSA and its rump diocese did not call the Court’s attention to this statute (which is obviously applicable) in their Memorandum of Law in support of their request for a preliminary injunction. That omission will not earn them points with the federal court.