LifeSite News: Dr. John Lamont responds to criticisms of letter to bishops concerning heresies of Pope Francis

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JMJ

Dr. Lamont has written a response to the criticisms levied against the Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church.

For me, here's the pivotal point in the response:

Catholics must judge for themselves in reading the letter whether this evidence is sufficient or not.

My primary concern is that people will arrive at and act upon the sede-vacantist conclusion of this thought process.  Dr. Lamont then makes an statistical argument and goes on to state:

We should therefore accept that Pope Francis has publicly and persistently upheld the heresies listed above.

At this point it is obvious that Dr. Lamont has personally come to the conclusion and made this private judgement for himself. He is definitely entitled to hold his personal opinion.

However, the statistical argument is flawed because he assigned a low probability that Pope Francis is not meaning to make heretical statements etc.  ... But he has no data to support such an assumption. 

So ...

You cannot 'accept' that Pope Francis has publicly and most importantly persistently upheld the heresies ... because there is still a chance that he did not.

Hence the need for an authoritative judgement. 

At best Dr. Lamont could conclude, like a radiologist reading an MRI, is that the statements are consistent with heresy and need further examination.

Again an need for a formal investigation ... which I believe is the intent of the Open Letter (I wonder if they sent it privately first).

Without that examination and determination, it is simply a personal opinion being stacked up with other personal opinions. While this is useful in an academic environment, this is not a mere academic question, it is a juridical question. Resorting to statistical proofs and a stack-up of personal opinion is not valid and this is where Dr. Lamont appears to be undermining his credibility. 

 

He is proceeding on the assumption that Pope Francis is a heretic. 

In engineering, I learned early on that you need to list your assumptions and then validate them. 

These assumptions are not validated. 

Below is a statement made to me by a senior engineer guiding me through one of my earlier RF designs:

Source: Not certain where the picture came from the phrase was coined by Jerry Belson

P^3