The Pope Did It?

[Paul Serup]

So it has been well over a month since I answered Mr. Norton and I wonder if I will get a response to my latest post. Perhaps I will but no one has declared that any further answers are to be forthcoming.
So I have no response at this point to my latest. The fact of the matter is, the evidence is, that no one has refuted / debunked Charles Chiniquy and it is not because he was a nobody and no one had tried. The importance of doing so is why such academic luminaries as Joseph George Jr. and William Hanchett have tried. The importance of someone having done so is why Mr. Norton quoted William Hanchett saying “Of course, there never has been any evidence of the Catholic Church’s complicity in the assassination, and none that Lincoln himself feared Catholicism etc” Mr Norton also provided a link to Joseph George, Jr.’s paper on Chiniquy. In the end though, no one has debunked Chiniquy. If the evidence that the celebrated clergyman has not been refuted, though people have tried, does not inform one’s views, then in the end what does? If the historical evidence is not informing one’s view then it has to only be bias, preconceived views that one will not give up, that is doing so. That is not being led by the evidence. That is, according to my dictionary, actually very much like bigotry. I am sorry for being so direct but that is what the word bigot means. According to the first meaning of my Living Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language dictionary, a bigot is defined as: “a person obstinately and unreasonably wedded to a particular religious creed, opinion or practice”.
If Chiniquy cannot be refuted, cannot be shown to be wrong, does not ones’ views on the central event of American history, the Civil War, and the murder of the central actor in the drama, Abraham Lincoln, have to be informed by him? That is how real historians act. Kate Clifford Larson began her research on Mary Surratt with the view that she was an innocent woman who was unjustly convicted. She did not stay in this place however as she was led by the evidence and she finished her research with the view that Mary Surratt was certainly part of the conspiracy that took Lincoln’s life and that is what she put in her book, The Assassin’s Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln.
That is very significant thing, that Chiniquy’s assertions have been out for a hundred and thirty years and has not been refuted and the significance of this ought to be recognized if one is intellectually honest.
The fact is that the Roman Catholic Church supported the Southern Confederacy, with slavery as its cornerstone, the fact is that the Vatican was the only country to recognize the Confederacy. Evidence is presented by Chiniquy that it was then the Jesuits who were behind the effort to decapitate the Union government as a last ditch attempt to help the South to break up the United States. You may wish to say, “that is crazy”. In reply, I would say, “if it is crazy, why can’t someone debunk Chiniquy?” Merry Christmas to all.