Lincoln Assassination Controversy: Just Politics or Catholic/Jesuit Plot?

Another Christian blogger, Harry A. Gaylord, discovered ex-Catholic priest Charles Chiniquy's book that exposes the Catholic conspiracy behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and presents Chiniquy's claims in this post at his blog, Sun and Shield.  

He begins his post with this:

I, like so many other Americans, was always told the conspiracy to assassinate one of our best Presidents was because of anger over the South losing the Civil War.  However, my research shows Lincoln’s assassination was about much more than that.

He goes on to sketch out Chiniquy's account of his life in the Roman Church, Fifty Years in the "Church" of Rome including the eventual assassination of Lincoln for successfully defending Chiniquy against trumped-up charges brought by his superiors in the Church, and Chiniquy's claim that the Roman Catholic Church, specifically the Jesuits, was behind the assassination.

Paul Serup who wrote the book Who Killed Abraham Lincoln?  based on a couple of decades of research into Chiniquy's claims, discovered Gaylord's blog and posted a comment, which turned into an exchange with Gaylord and others, including a couple of defenders of the Catholic Church against Chiniquy [who posted this link to a Catholic apologetics website. (written by a Jesuit of course) ].

Gaylord found Chiniquy's book completely credible, as did I when I read it some months back.  Then I heard about Paul Serup's book and have intended to read it eventually.  [Finally I've ordered it and hope I'll get to read it in rehab after surgery on my hip on the 9th (prayer appreciated).  It's most readily available at the moment at Chris Pinto's site, Adullam Films.]  Serup researched old newspaper accounts of the trials of Charles Chiniquy over the charges against him by his Catholic superiors, as well as the trial of the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination among other things.

As Gaylord indicates in his blog, if Chiniquy's story is true it flies in the face of what we've always been told about the assassination of Lincoln, so clearly there is controversy about all this that's going to need to be unraveled.  There was even a movie, The Conspirator, made by Robert Redford in 2011 [Trailer here] attempting to exonerate Mary Surratt who was convicted as the main conspirator in the assassination and put to death for it, which is a subject of comment by Serup at Gaylord's blog;  and there was also a book on the assassination by Bill O'Reilly that came out in the same year that apparently doesn't deal with the Chiniquy allegations.

Ever since his death there have been attempts to discredit Chiniquy that Serup tries to answer in his book, including the 1908 article by the Jesuit Smith linked above, and a more recent article by Joseph George Jr. in 1976, titled the Lincoln Writings of Charles P. T. Chiniquy and of course if there is a "scholarly" claim attached to any of these efforts they are likely to be believed and both Chiniquy and Serup are then accused of lying.  This has been happening here and there where this topic comes up. 

Since I was persuaded by Chiniquy I expect the best of Serup's research and hope to learn enough about all these things to join in the discussion on their side.