I’ve just published the innocence of the Popes part 2 on my substack blog. Check it out there and please join. Also, those posts are sent by e-mail, so check your spam folder if you are not getting the posts when they are issued.

This series of posts “Innocence of the Popes” are excerpts from a book I am still in the process of writing, so you get to read it as I write it. I don’t know if I will publish the whole thing in excerpts at substack or not. The book will defend the Popes against the accusations of the “Francis critics” also known as the “papal accusers”. And it will function also as a reply to the taunt of Fr. Z. that those who support Pope Francis should write a book of their own as a reply.

The title of the book will not be “The Innocence of the Popes” as I had once decided. Instead it will be “Reply to the Papal Accusers”. And it absolutely defends every Pope and Council against every accusation of grave errors on doctrine or discipline, and every Pope against the accusation that he has failed in faith by apostasy or heresy or idolatry. But the defense is based on teachings of the Magisterium, and not a prudential judgment of the particulars of each accusation.

The reason is that replying point by point would result in nothing but two cases, in the court of public opinion, and any judgment about which argument was right would be the opinion of fallen sinners. Such arguments are never definitive. So every accusation against every Pope or Council cannot be proven to be true beyond doubt. But the defense can prove beyond doubt that no such grave errors or grave failures of faith occurred — based on the infallible teachings of Vatican I and the ordinary universal Magisterium. And that latter type of defense is what the book offers: the infallible teachings of Christ in the Gospels and of His Church.

RLCJ