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I don't know WHAT your problem is! Every one knows you're WAY better looking than that fowl guy ....

Here's the problem, as I see it. The whole "conspiracy" argument, considered as a genre, is almost completely unassailable. It cannot be shown to be false, and so it cannot be shown to be true.

I don't know all that much about Paul VI. If there were some way to show one thing or another, I'd put serious loot on his not wanting to skirt on the edge of the Humanae Vitae dogma for which he suffered so much.

But it could all have been part of a sneaky plan.. Similarly with my appeals to the context of the almost dialogue of social encyclicals from Leo to JPII. I see a context. I see PAUL VI stressing that one cannot NOT have a global outlook on social problems, and suggesting that there are eleemosynary and governmental outfits in place which might be used for charity on a grand scale. I could even say that I think his hope in those outfits was misplaced.

But I can't, I don't have the time -- no one has the time -- to track down and prove or disprove any deathbed meetings or sub rosa communications. It can't be done.

It also takes right much time to read all the social encyclicals ... to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them. I can't say I've done it all. I have usually gone in and cherry picked becuase I had a class to prepare or something.Of course, my "side" of the argument is set up by the position we adopted previously, to take very much amiss suggestions that Paul VI was a crypto-globalist. We can't PROVE he wasn't. But you can't PROVE I'm not a committee of Protestant Practical Jokers.("Psst! Calvin, shut UP!""No YOU shut up Zwingli!" "Quiet! He'll hear us!")

So I think probably the best thing to do is to lay out your argument, to state your thesis as clearly as you can, and then duck into the bunker, because in the heat of battle, sometimes we all forget to aim at the argument and start aiming at the guy making it.