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What's the source of this story? I mean, who are the links in the chain between Christopher Hale (the blogger you link to) and the Papal Ambassador? And how many links are there? The blog post only makes a vague reference to "sources."
The reason I ask is that for many years now, there is been a pattern where (1) in real life or online, someone makes a claim which puts the Trump Administration in a bad light; (2) I scrutinize the claim; and (3) it turns out to be some combination of baseless, unsupported by any evidence, based on wild twistings of peoples' words, or simply fabricated.
This claim has the same sort of feel to it and therefore I am extremely skeptical.
Hmm let's see what I wrote again and what you quoted.
You literally had your answer right there, and even if you didn't notice that, and just read Letters from Leo up to the paywall, that post also links The Free Press article twice, and mentions it four different times up to that point.
IDK how you could have missed this.
Ok, let's.
Somehow I didn't notice that those were links. But in any event, my question essentially stands:
What is the chain between the Papal Ambassador and Mattia Ferraresi? Was it a direct interview? If not, who was between them and how many steps were there?
No need to get snippy, it's a reasonable question.
What's the chain between the Papal Ambassador and Mattia Ferraresi? Was it a direct interview? If not, who was between them and how many steps were there?
That is a different question than what you asked. Similar, but not the same. The one you had actually asked was answered simply by reading what was written multiple times.
The main information we have is in the article. Perhaps Ferraresi and the rest of the TFP team have shared more details elsewhere, but I'll leave that to you to scour their social media if you want to know.
Do you, personally, believe the event in question happened? What evidence leads you to your conclusion? Is your assessment of that evidence derived from general principles, or is this a case of any stick being sufficient to beat a dog?
Which alleged event do you think has a stronger evidentiary basis: Trump's underlings threatening the Vatican, or Biden raping Tara Reade?
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That's not true at all. My original question asked for the entire chain. Apparently information as to one link in the chain was easily available, but I asked about the ENTIRE CHAIN.
Here's what I had asked:
IDK how you could have missed this.
I've had enough experience with TDS that I'm not going to bother. The chances that it will lead to anything other than vague "sources" are just too low.
What's more important is that you don't even know yourself. In other words, this is another example of someone encountering information that's "too good to check."
Well thank you for admitting that you failed to do the bare minimum of knowledge seeking and not read the original article or this. Of course you don't know if you actively chose not to.
What's the point of a discussion if "I won't read" is the starting point?
For example you so very much did not read that you don't understand that Hale claims to have independently verified from The Free Press, so they aren't in the same chain to begin with. It's not Hale > TFP > sources, it's Hale > Hale Sources and TFP > TFP sources.
If you read LettersFromLeo, his verification comes in the preface he added after the blog post so you would also know, if you had done the bare minimum, that he hasn't gone into depth revealing his sources in that blog because the verification was done after his writeup of the TFP post.
I fixed your question for you. And the answer is simple: You bear the burden of proof, not me.
I'm a little confused. Are you claiming that LettersfromLeo supplies the chain that I originally requested?
If so, please QUOTE him where he does so. If not, please admit that he failed to do so.
Anyway, do you admit that from the outset, I requested the ENTIRE CHAIN?
And do you admit that you have failed to provide the same, instead trying to assign the burden to me to go search for it?
If you're not even willing to go read the primary source on the topic, what "burden of proof" can even be fulfilled there? You can't just go "nuh uh, I'm not gonna read it" to discount everything.
I'll give you the information I have on his verification right at the top of the article, that you seem to have not bothered reading even a little of.
Yes, he doesn't provide what sources he used here, I never said he did. What I am saying however is that if you want to know more about what they are basing it off of beyond what their respective articles include, you can go ask them. I am not a part of The Free Press and I don't have any relation to Christopher Hale of LFL, I do not have any non public info as to who or what their sources are. In fact I have less than that given I do not desire to scour all their social media pages to see if they've revealed anything there.
You started with the chain for Christopher Hale, and then switched to the chain for Ferraresi. Issue is, they are independently verified from each other, they are not the same chain to begin with, something you would know if you had clicked on the link and read the very first paragraph!
Umm, here's what you said:
It's hard to see this as anything other than an intentional misrepresentation on your part.
Nonsense, I asked for the ENTIRE CHAIN from the very beginning. If you disagree, please QUOTE me. Failing that, please apologize for having misrepresented my position.
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You appear to be making assertions of fact. People ask you for your evidence behind these assertions. You say that they can look for evidence if they want to:
and they decline:
They do not appear to be declining to read. You do appear to be declining to back up your assertion beyond "these people said a thing".
These people did indeed say a thing. Do you believe them? If so, why? That is a discussion. If you believe you have good reasons to believe them, or other people have poor reasons to not believe them, than taking a position and explaining your reasoning behind it produces good discussion. Even if someone else is dismissive of your reasoning, making a solid argument is persuasive to onlookers, and this forum exists precisely to facilitate that sort of discussion.
I've asked you whether you personally believe this report, and if so, why. Do you think that question is a good basis for discussion? if not, why not?
Actually, it is The Free Press and LettersFromLeo that are making such assertions.
Well yeah, if they don't want to actually bother and go to the writers to find an answer to the question they apparently have, they don't have to. But their choice is their choice! "I don't want to" isn't the same as "therefore you must be wrong". If they want to go question it, it's not hard to shoot The Free Press team an email or something.
Bari Weiss is a pretty reliable centrist who is friendly to the Trump admin in many areas. I doubt she would be letting through blatant lies on her main journalism site right? Maybe you have different ideas on how trustworthy her and her staff are, but there's probably something behind these accusations. Else Bari Weiss and her staff are risking all the good will they've built up for a relatively minor story in the grand scheme of things. And if it was completely fake, the Vatican might denounce it too and the story would fade away into nothingness while damaging their credibility in the long term. I see no reason to believe Weiss would be doing that.
By making it "your assertions" like above, you hinge the entire credibility on me, an internet stranger. And not the established journalists who broke the story.
Sure but if they can't be bothered to even read what is there (like they missed a collective five references to the original story being from TFP), what's the point? There has to be some sort of baseline before meaningful discussion occurs. I think "read the words that are on your screen and in the link" is the bare minimum.
You wrote:
That reads to me like a person making a factual claim, and presenting evidence to back up their claim. The problem is that the evidence you've presented is "someone somewhere said it", and that you appear to be trying to frame the discussion as though you have no actual position to defend in it. The latter bit, in particular, I am very sure should not be tolerated here.
Bari Weiss is a journalist. Why would I conclude that she would not print blatant lies on her main journalism site? That is something that Journalists have been frequently doing since the invention of the profession. Further, whatever additional status Bari Weiss has for herself is attenuated by the fact that she did not write this piece, and I would be most surprised if she edited it in any meaningful way. Some guy I've never heard of wrote it, and Weiss's site published it.
I have just attempted to read the piece, but it is behind a paywall. Does the free press piece cite any sources other than the Letters from Leo blog? Has the Vatican confirmed the Blog's account? If not, my prior would be that this rumor was posted by the blogger, the Free Press journalist repeated it in his article with no further verification, and it proliferated from there through the rest of the press ecosystem. In which case, your attribution would be incorrect: if the Free Press got it entirely from LettersFromLeo, then it is just from LettersFromLeo, not from both them and the Free Press. Further, this exact method of laundering baseless allegations is the entire basis for the "journalists very rarely lie" meme.
Show me an instance of a press outfit losing "all the goodwill they've built up" due to repeating someone else's lie uncritically. If this event turns out to not have happened, people such as yourself will simply say "well, they never said it happened, they only reported that someone else said it happened, which was entirely true!" I know this, because this is exactly what people like yourself have done in the many, many, many previous incidents where journalists were caught blatantly lying. Your apparent reluctance to stake a position for yourself on the claim's truth or falsity telegraphs the maneuver.
You, an internet stranger, have considerably more credibility than an "established journalist", in that I do not know for a fact that you earn your paycheck through professional dishonesty. Further, I can have a discussion with you about the facts of a matter, and I cannot do this with most journalists. Further, I can maintain a running tally of previous conversations with a person like you, which I generally cannot do with most journalists. You are part of the reputation economy here; you stand to lose much more from this being a lie than the journalist in question does. That makes direct conversation with you a much better filter than consuming journo-slop directly.
In what sense does "the original story" belong to The Free Press? Did they investigate and present corroborating evidence? ...Have you yourself actually read TFP's article, or did you read one of the hundreds of free articles repeating the story uncritically, and attributing it to "The Free Press and Letters From Leo"? If you yourself aren't actually clear on where the "original story" actually came from, aren't @omw_68's questions warranted?
In any case, I would say that the point is to discuss what we believe and why. Hence my previous questions, and I think they're pretty good ones given your responses so far.
There does indeed need to be some sort of baseline. One part of that baseline is to speak plainly, and a major part of that is to take an actual, personal position in the matters you discuss. Likewise, from the introduction at the top of the thread:
I aim to understand what you think and why. Digging in to how you evaluate evidence on an issue is part of that. On the other hand, neither your OP here nor your subsequent replies nor your previous participation here that I've noted indicates to me that you have a good grasp on what the point of this place is. Certainly it does not seem like you make a habit of arguing to understand, which is a shame.
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Unnamed ‘sources’ aren’t uncommon or inherently unreliable in Vatican inside baseball politics. But letters from Leo is run by a former Democrat congressional candidate with the explicit goal of pushing the Catholic Church into alignment with the DNC, including dropping opposition to abortion, and more fact-oriented sources- or indeed, more high quality op Ed sources- are consistently unable to confirm the parts of this story that make it a big deal.
Of special note is the Pillar, which is easily a top five news source on internal Vatican goings-on and probably the top source written in English. They would likely be the first ones to confirm the story and so far, their stance is ‘thé meeting happened but nothing of note took place- no threats of Avignon’.
A Democratic media organ presenting a highly inflammatory allegation with salacious details without source and treating it as credible despite no one else seemingly able to verify?
Say it ain't so.
They’re not even a real media organ. It’s an advocacy blog that doesn’t normally do straightforward ‘news’.
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Without this, there essentially is no story - so the article OP posted appears to be a fabrication, which is unsurprising.
Yes, liberal Catholic journalism of record(which letters from Leo is not, it’s a rather poor attempt to tie secular political liberalism to the current pope) is treating this as a page five story.
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Next link is Mattia Ferraresi, an Italian journalist. After that it vanishes into unnamed sources. Since the Avignon Papacy is something that would be a much bigger thing at the Vatican than in the US, I rather suspect it was fabricated there.
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