Summations Only

No YOU aren't exhausted but I am because I'm the one being attacked by the usual gang, not you. I'm not going to go back and try to figure out why I had the impression I had at the time, I don't care.I've explained a million times how the immorality accusation apparently came up. The suit wasn't about that, but it apparently became part of the case to discredit Chiniquy. What is your problem?HERE is how it came up as Chiniquy recounts it in Chapter 58:Some time before the second trial, He spends hours that night praying and in the middle of the night Philomene Moffat presents herself to Lincoln who comes to tell him at 3 AM. It was she not Terrien who relayed the story to Lincoln, so I had that wrong. Lebel finds out she is in town and talks to her and realizes the case is lost and goes to Spink to get him to withdraw, which is what he does when court opens in the morning.Again, nothing you say about the legal description of the case changes any of this. The case was dismissed and Lincoln's note describes how it was settled. The accusation of immoralibyt was an attempt to destroy his character, the case itself was something else.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well, the reason you feel under attack is because there is apparently no idea so weird or fantastic that you won't accept it if it accords with your own beliefs. You're just a big smorgasbord to flim-flam artists with a religious bent. The problem is always the same with you: no evidence. There is no evidence for much of Chiniquy's self-serving claims. I have the link, and there's no need to quote Chiniquy's unevidenced claims, but since you quote this part let me mention that slander is usually a civil, not a criminal, matter, and that it is very unlikely that Chiniquy would have been jailed. In some jurisdictions slander is a criminal matter, but a Catholic Priest would still be very unlikely to have been jailed. And there is apparently nothing in the historical record to indicate that Chiniquy was ever jailed.So once again, another unusual claim with no evidence to support it.--Percy

No the reason I am under attack is that I am under attack, in typical EvC fashion.He was worried about the IMMORALITY CHARGE, not the slander for crying out loud.Nobody can ever say anything without external evidence, can they, unless it's you guys of course.

How hilarious. As if this whole thread isn't just one big character assassination of Paul Serup, Charles Chiniquy and me.

No, you are not under attack, nor is Paul Serup. The ideas you try to market are certainly under attack since none of them seem to have any connection to reason, honesty or reality.It is the same with Paul Serup. He has not been attacked, but what he has posted certainly has. When someone is shown to misrepresent even the stuff that is really easy to check, why should anyone take anything he says seriously, particularly his hate mongering.

No, you feel under attack because you've again taken an indefensible position where the source is a single individual who tells fantastical stories with no evidence and whose claims have been considered and rejected again and again by historians of all religions for over a hundred years. At least a couple hours ago you seemed to realize that there was no immorality charge and were only claiming that the prosecution was using the morals issue as a tactic, though you were unable to explain how that would work. Now your rationality has taken a big backwards step as you're again asserting that there was an immorality charge. There was no such charge. The court records show this unequivocally.Consider something else that makes no sense. Spink sued for damages of $10,000. Had Chiniquy lost the case he would have had to pay $10,000. Do you really believe the Jesuits had Lincoln assassinated because he saved Chiniquy $10,000? Why would they care?(Parenthetically, the $10,000 amount would have been very unlikely to be awarded. It would be the same as $300,000 in today's dollars. That's a great deal of money, so the amount actually awarded would likely have been much less, probably less than $1000 in 1856 dollars.) There you go again making blatantly untrue statements. You're quoting a guy who tells stories while we're quoting court records. The only person making you look bad is you.Faith, things that actually happened leave behind evidence. If a Jesuit plot is responsible for Lincoln's assassination then it would have left behind a great deal of evidence. Find some.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

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No the reason I am under attack is that I am under attack, in typical EvC fashion.

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You would be criticised less if you did fewer things worthy of criticism.For instance - to name just one example - you could accept that your "speculation" that Paul Serup believed an obvious falsehood is a criticism of Paul Serup. Instead of going into "shoot the messenger mode" as you did.

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He was worried about the IMMORALITY CHARGE, not the slander for crying out loud.

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There were no actual immorality charges. Maybe there was an issue of character witnesses, but any criminal charges would have to wait for a criminal case to be brought against Chiniquy.

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Nobody can ever say anything without external evidence, can they, unless it's you guys of course.

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Given the actual facts skepticism of Chiniquy's claim is quite reasonable - in fact it is the rational position. I know that you judge Chiniquy to be absolutely reliable for reasons you aren't prepared to share but you can hardly expect anyone else to accept that over their own assessment.

Show me in this thread where I have been anything but polite to you, Serup or Chiniquy. And show me where you have been anything but nasty to me.

You are a self-righteous wind bag aren't you. You started this thread as an attack upon me, but you have turned it around and claim it is an attack on you. Get a grip.Neither you or paulyboy have supplied one iota of evidence supporting any thing Paul or chiniquy have asserted. Your unwavering support of them show your total inability to be rational.Where is the evidence? Where are the glowing reviews of his book he claims to have received? The only good reviews have been ones he wrote himself. He dropped numerous names earlier in this thread, but those people seem to be only barely aware of him and his book.Just because something is anti-Catholic does not make it true. The catholic church is guilty of enough. People do not have to make more shit up.Earlier you stated that the Jesuits were accomplished assassins, please provide a source or reference. If you don't have one, quit spewing crap.Do you have one source, just one, to corroborate anything chiniquy claimed?Edited by Theodoric, : No reason given.

It doesn't look like Paul or Faith or going to contribute further to this thread, so I just threw it into summation mode.

Faith started this thread to try to defend the writings of Paul Serup and to try to convince folk that they were history, were worthy of something more then ridicule and were based on reality. Paul Serup himself joined in to defend his writings.Unfortunately the reality is that Paul Serup is not a historian, does not write history and his writings are not worthy of anything more than ridicule as the very posts he made clearly demonstrated.But that is to be expected when dealing with "Biblical Christians". They always begin with the conclusion, try (almost always unsuccessfully) to find evidence to support that conclusion, actively redact, deny and avoid all evidence that refutes their conclusion, then cry about how mean everyone who disputes their conclusion is, how those people will regret it someday and finally run away.

Faith presented this topic as some sort of refutation of me. All she and Paul did here was present even more unsupported assertions and absolutely no evidence.They have both run off to hide. If Paul cannot defend his assertions and conclusions here, how does he expect anyone, except the most gullible, to trust anything he has to say.As has been stated, he is using classic fundie "argumentation". Have your conclusion and look for anything you can shoehorn in as "evidence". Ignore everything else that does not support your assertion.Unfortunately, there are lots of people like Faith that will believe anything that reinforces their hate. They don't need any evidence to support their prejudice and seem to actually prefer that there is no evidence.

This thread was started to defend the credibility of Paul Serup, and indirectly that of Charles Chiniquy.Serup's methodology is to cherry-pick facts and claims that might be seen to support his conclusion - but without presenting the necessary reasoning or analysis to make his case. For instance he lead off with the New York Draft Riots, pointing out that most of the rioters were Catholic (which happens to be true) but not really dealing with the question of whether that was because the Catholic Church was involved in the riots or simply a consequence of the rioters being predominantly poor Irish immigrants (which seems to be more likely the case).Chiniquy himself is even less credible than Serup, In the few chapters I have read, Chiniquy presents himself as the whiter-than-white hero of a poorly-written melodrama where he is always uncovering the villains' wrongdoings and defeating their unjust attempts to persecute him. Indeed, it appears to me that Chiniquy has merely written down the fantasies he constructed around the events (long past at the time of writing) - certainly I see no other plausible explanation for the dialogue!Indeed, in the course of discussion I had occasion to investigate the libel case raised against Chiniquy by Peter Spinks. It is instructive to compare Chiniquy's confused account with that of a close friend and colleague of Lincoln, Henry C. Whitney, writing in his book, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln. For flavour I present here each man's account of the end of the trial. Chiniquy: Whitney: (p55) Needless to say the documentation we have seen here agrees with Whitney in showing that the case was ended by mutual agreement, apparently under Lincoln's auspices.In summary, it appears that Chiniquy rewrote the events of his life as a fantasy where he was always right and his enemies - or those he perceived as his enemies - were outright villains. Exactly the sort of man we might expect to invent a conspiracy.Serup's attempt to defend Chiniquy amounts to little more than an exercise in innuendo - the evidence is not there to directly support Chiniquy's wilder claims, so Serup casts his net wider but still finds nothing to make a decent case. The only people who believe Chiniquy are those who want to believe him.

I don't know what to say. Human nature tells us that there is no idea so stupid that someone somewhere won't believe it, and this means that ideas that are merely incredible and lack evidence have no problem collecting adherents.But Faith and Paul had every opportunity to address the points that were raised and didn't:

• Chiniquy described Spink as withdrawing his charge, while we have documentary evidence that the litigants settled out of court.
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• Chiniquy described Lincoln addressing the court and excoriating Chiniquy's persecutors when there would have been no such opportunity with the case settled out of court.
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• Chiniquy claimed the charge was immorality when the documentary evidence says the charge was slander.
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• Chiniquy described a witness obtained at the last minute who purportedly played a role that makes no sense given the facts we know.
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• Why would the Jesuits hate Lincoln so much just for orchestrating an out of court settlement?
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• Concerning the Lincoln assassination, Chiniquy claimed the plotters were all Catholic when only one, a woman who played no direct role, was Catholic.
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• Chiniquy claimed the Jesuits were ultimately responsible but never produced any evidence.
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• Chiniquy claimed the Vatican was responsible for Southern secession, which given the lack of Catholics in the south makes no sense whatsoever.
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• No evidence of any Chiniquy claim has surfaced in the 128 years since his book was published.

Paul's response was to ignore the issues and to keep hammering on irrelevancies, such as the Catholic riots or what nice things gift shop owners were saying about his book. Faith's response was accusations of bias, as if we were fans of Catholicism or religion. I'm pretty sure that if Faith came here claiming that the Southern Baptist Convention was behind Lincoln's murder that she'd find no takers (though it would make a lot more sense than the Jesuits).For some people "what is true" is what's important, for others it's "what I believe." Since evidence isn't required for the beliefs of those in the latter category, they can believe some pretty weird things.--Percy

Other than the fact that one of EvC's members is involved, this hate inspired crap is nothing new, and frankly is of little interest to me.Anti-Catholicism - Wikipedia

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Many Protestant reformers, including John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Knox, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, and John Wesley, as well as most Protestants of the 16th-18th centuries, identified the Pope as the Antichrist. The fifth round of talks in the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue notes,

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In calling the pope the "antichrist", the early Lutherans stood in a tradition that reached back into the eleventh century. Not only dissidents and heretics but even saints had called the bishop of Rome the "antichrist" when they wished to castigate his abuse of power.

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