In August 1983 the present writer spoke to Davies at considerable length by telephone. The conversation centred on two main questions:
(i) Is John-Paul II a public pertinacious heretic?
(ii) Do public pertinacious heretics automatically forfeit all ecclesiastical offices they may possess and become ineligible to acquire any new ones, including the papacy?
Davies’s tactic, witnessed by his then colleague Mr. N.M. Gwynne, was to deny both points, but if forced to retreat from one of them, to take refuge in the other –
a process he was able to repeat indefinitely.