Perhaps the only reason that a true Catholic with a good will and a functioning intellect would fear coming to the same conclusion on the papacy as Archbishop Viganó did would be the indefectibility of the Catholic Church.  Fr. John Hardon SJ explains that indefectibility essentially promises that the Catholic Church "will always remain the institution of salvation, founded by Christ. This affirms that the Church is essentially unchangeable in her teaching, her constitution, and her liturgy. It does not exclude modifications that do not affect her substance, nor does it exclude the decay of individual local churches or even whole dioceses." But could that decay include the Pope?  Of [...]

Before Vatican II, numbers of Catholics across the globe were exploding.  Consider just a few stats regarding American Catholics as listed in the Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: In 1930, the USA had 27,000 priests, but by 1965 that number nearly doubled, bringing the total number of American priests to 58,000. In 1930, the United States had 20,203,702 Catholics.  By 1965, that number had sky-rocketed to 45,640,619.  This means Catholics were not just reproducing, but making many converts. By 1965, American priests, nuns and lay people had built the world's largest conglomerate of hospitals, universities, high schools, grade schools and charitable organizations ever seen in the history of a young [...]