Posted on 12/28/2005 10:48:42 AM PST by infoguy
Check out the promotional ad for this Thursday evening's (December 29, 2005) episode of ABC's Primetime. The promo is for the story, "On the Trail of Pope Joan" (audiotape on file; emphasis mine):
"Diane Sawyer takes you on the trail of a passionate mystery. Just as intriguing as The Da Vinci Code. Chasing down centuries-old clues hidden even inside the Vatican. Could a woman disguised as a man have been Pope? Thursday night. One astonishing Primetime."
It doesn't get much uglier than this, folks. Quite simply, there was never a female pope, or "Pope Joan." The tale is a complete fabrication dating back to the 13th century - nearly 400 years after the reported "reign" of the so-called "Joan." For reliable summaries of the bogus tale, see this and this. Scholars debunked the fable hundreds of years ago, and recent books (this and this, for example) have further repudiated it.
Over the centuries, the "Pope Joan" story has been used as a slanderous tool to tarnish the Catholic Church and degrade Catholics. In his acclaimed 2003 book The New Anti-Catholicism, Philip Jenkins writes, "The Pope Joan legend is a venerable staple of the anti-Catholic mythology" (page 89). Jenkins adds,
"Though it has not the slightest foundation ... [f]rom the sixteenth century through the nineteenth, the tale was beloved by Protestants, since it testified to Catholic stupidity ... [Today] Pope Joan enjoys a lively presence on the Web, where feminist anti-Catholics celebrate her existence much as did seventeenth-century Calvinists" (page 89).
That a major network like ABC would lend credibility to such a vicious anti-Catholic smear is deplorable.
What could be worse? Donna Woolfolk Cross' novel, Pope Joan, seeks to advance the stature and validity of the fictional character, and a movie of this book is currently in production. Yikes.
And maybe, just maybe, there might be some folks behind the scenes at the MSM trying their darndest to do anything they can to present Catholicism and the Church in an unfavorable light because of Catholics' intractable views on issues like abortion, homosexuality, and gay 'marriage'.
Where did you cut and paste that from?
Oh, thought it was a story about Joan Lunden.
Read the Da Vinci Code, the argument was not convincing and the underlying mystery wasn't very good. I will make a very bad movie IMHO.
THAT would NEVER happen.
Can't offend those people. Its only open season on Christians and Jews.
Kelly, who is a pretty anti-Catholic individual in his own right, is being disingenuous when he writes this.
It was a wild yarn before the Reformation, and insofar as before the Reformation almost everyone in Europe was Catholic, this folk tale was told among Catholics and insofar as lots of people knew the yarn it was told in "Catholic circles" - i.e. pre-Reformation Europe.
However the person who is quoting Kelly is making a switcheroo from Kelly's affirmation of the tale's currency to the (implied) notion that the Vatican accepted the yarn before the Reformation and only denied it after.
The vatican no more acknowledged or accepted the tale before the Reformation than it did after.
It's a natural human reaction to be annoyed when people lie about you, especially when they do it on a national broadcast. That should be pretty obvious.
Thank you very much.
The existence of rival claimants to the Papacy in the Middle Ages does nothing to render the Apostolic Succession fraudulent.
The reason why they are called antipopes is because none of them had a legitimate claim on the Papacy according to Church law.
Because someone tries to fool other people into thinking that the Apostolic Succession applies to them when it doesn't, the Apostolic Succession as a doctrine is not undermined.
That's like saying that because someone falsely claimed to be someone's son, the whole notion of fatherhood itself is false.
Ref: Da Vinci Code: "It will make a very bad movie IMHO".
Lets hope so. The book sold well. I'm predicting boycotts.
Plenty of people.
But thanks for implying that I don't actually exist.
An attack on the Catholic Church is an attack on the oldest institution in Christianity. Any actual Christian would be concerned.
I'm hoping no Christians will go to the movie or buy/rent the DVD. The box office profit for this attack on Christianity should be dismal.
So we don't 'attack' institutions? I don't see it as an attack, but rather a history lesson on a rather strange part of that church's history
Any actual Christian would be concerned.
Why? Is the pope, or any past pope for that matter, more important than me? Different in the eyes of God than me? How is discussion of what many people believed for close to 3 centuries an attack on Christianity? Now if people believed the pope was somehow divine (however that very aspect is in and of itself an attack on the tenets of Christianity) and ABC said something questionable, I may be concerned. However, as he is not (and none of his predecessors were), it's just a show about a 1000 year old rumor. Which according to most has been already dispelled. So there should be no problem in reporting on it.
I like how the Catholic Encyclopedia offers "reliable summaries of the bogus tale." As if the Catholic Church could be unbiased in this legend.
It has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. It has to do with the political power of the Catholic Church over its followers.
Yes, I see your point.
Oh don't worry. Christians have a record of their boycotts generating more interest. Remember "The Last Temptation of Christ"? It was such a bad movie that it would have only lasted 3 weeks in the theaters if Christians weren't so hysterical about it. Instead it was in the theaters for about 12 weeks because of the buzz.
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