Oh, that conference on deposing a pope? Church Miscreant had it wrong. And Fake Site News.

ur friends at Church Mis­cre­ant were all jit­tery last month (not with cof­fee but antic­i­pa­tion) at the news that there would be a con­fer­ence in Paris on how to depose a pope. Canon lawyers, the arti­cle by Chris­tine Niles gushed, would be there! You know, actu­al canon lawyers, who might advise on how to get rid of that pesky Bergoglio. Two peo­ple sched­uled to speak at the con­fer­ence even signed a let­ter cri­tiquing Amor­is Laeti­tia! Anoth­er sup­ported the dubia! (As if we don’t know what Church Mis­cre­ant had in mind by connect­ing the dots this way for us.)

Fake Site News tried to make the same con­nec­tion:

The con­fer­ence comes after four years of Fran­cis at the helm of the Bar­que of Peter. [Four long, long, long years. Will it ever end?] Dur­ing this time the Pope, and the peo­ple he has put into key posi­tions, have steered the Church in a direc­tion that would have been unthink­able to faith­ful Catholics under the two pre­vi­ous pon­tif­fs of John Paul II and Pope Bene­dict XVI. [Virtue sig­nal­ing not­ed.]

Turns out, it was noth­ing of the kind, so you can put anoth­er check in the over­stuffed “wrong again” col­umn for Fake Site and Mis­cre­ant. Tom Heneghan reports:

Hold­ing a col­lo­qui­um to dis­cuss dethron­ing an erring Roman Catholic pon­tiff sounds like a call to bat­tle at a time when promi­nent car­di­nals say Pope Fran­cis is lead­ing the faith­ful astray.

But no. “The crowd seemed to be most­ly lay aca­d­e­mics.” Not that even car­di­nals could depose Pope Fran­cis, but not even Fake Site or Mis­cre­ant would have such delu­sions about “lay aca­d­e­mics.”

Speak­ers on Thurs­day and Fri­day (March 30 and 31) went back to the New Tes­ta­ment and church crises down through the cen­turies look­ing for any legal prece­dents that might show pos­si­ble ways to square the cir­cle of papal author­i­ty.

The pope is the supreme author­i­ty in the Catholic Church but can be judged if he devi­ates from the faith. There is no agree­ment on who could be that judge.

And that would be because there is no such judge. Poor Church Mis­cre­ant was reduced to quot­ing Gra­tian’s Dec­re­tal as though it were canon law: “The pope is not judged by anyone—unless he devi­ates from the Faith.” Yes, but who judges whether the pope has devi­at­ed from the faith? Let me stop the mis­cre­ant in its hasty effort to cut off the branch it sits on, by going to Canon 1404, which says: “The first see is judged by no one.” And that’s period—not com­ma or semi­colon. There is no “unless.”

And the lay aca­d­e­mics at the con­fer­ence fig­ured this out.

After two days of dis­cus­sions at the cen­ter in a south­ern Paris sub­urb, law pro­fes­sor Cyrille Dounot told the con­clud­ing ses­sion it was impos­si­ble to find a solu­tion to the prob­lem in the church’s long legal tra­di­tion.

“We’ve asked a ques­tion but we can’t answer it,” said Dounot, one of the three orga­niz­ers of the col­lo­qui­um. “Maybe we will be able in the future, but that’s improb­a­ble.”

Uh, yeah—I’d say it’s “improb­a­ble” at best. Would that Fake Site and Mis­cre­ant could fig­ure that one out. There is no depos­ing a pope.

Oh, and Dounot said one more thing, about this idea that the con­fer­ence was some pre­lude to cre­at­ing a path to depos­ing Pope Fran­cis. That was not at all the point of the con­fer­ence, he told RNS. “This is just an aca­d­e­m­ic exam­i­na­tion of a dis­put­ed ques­tion.” Because that’s what aca­d­e­mics do.

And Fake Site and Mis­cre­ant do what they do.