Posted on 01/20/2015 8:27:25 PM PST by Alex Murphy
When, during his encounter with the youth at the University of Santo Tomas, Pope Francis advised the organizers to include more women next time, to offset the program dominated by men, I remembered John Paul II at Mass in Luneta who brought cheer to women when he changed the standard invitation to prayer or exhortation, “Brothers and sisters in Christ,” to “Sisters and brothers…” While we know that the ordination of women in the Catholic Church are light years away, comment on this issue during the papal coverage should have been made over the cold malunggay soup served the Pope in Tacloban.
There are many women today, including Sen. Miriam Santiago, holding more advanced theology degrees than men, but they cannot be ordained because of their gender. While some countries have been governed by women, the Vatican is reserved for men.
But there is a persistent legend about a woman who became Pope Joan. Before the 16th century, it was generally believed that a certain Joan or Joanna was elected pope in the 9th, 10th, or 11th century, depending on which source you are reading. A critic of the papacy, John Hus, used the story of Pope Joan against the Council of Constance in 1415 and was not contradicted. Petrarch and Boccacio picked up the story of Pope Joan, claiming that Pope Leo IV (who died in 855 AD), or Pope Victor III (who died 1087 AD), was succeeded by one Pope Joan Anglicus. This “popessa” also appears under other names: Agnes, Gilberta, or Jutta. In some accounts, she remains nameless.
Allegedly educated in Athens, she traveled to Rome via Mainz dressed as a man. She impressed people in the Vatican with her learning and was invited to stay as a notary in the Curia where she rose to the rank of cardinal and was eventually elected pope. She reigned for two years, seven months and four days before she was exposed, according to Dominican accounts, during a procession from St. Peter’s to the Lateran. That morning, while passing one of the narrow streets between the Colosseum and Sant Clemente, she alighted from her horse and walked on foot a bit. When she remounted the horse, she delivered a baby! Everyone was surprised, then furious; a mob tied her to the tail of the horse, had her dragged around the city, and stoned her to death outside the walls of Rome.
Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, together with other 16th-century scholars, questioned the existence of this popessa and, after some research, found no contemporary evidence about any pope named Joan in any of the periods given as her reign. However, some people refuse to believe the historians and insist that the physical examination of a pope-elect is undertaken to determine his true gender.
While there was no female pope, history does record the existence of a woman Jesuit. While the constitution of the Society of Jesus specifically forbids its members to work regularly with women, and provides against the establishment of a women’s branch of the order, and regular spiritual direction of women, there was one woman, Isabel Roser, who would not take no for an answer. Roser was a childless, wealthy Catalan who was the benefactress of Ignatius Loyola. When she was widowed in 1541 she followed Ignatius to Rome and pestered him to accept her vows as a Jesuit. After two years of vain pleading, she went to Pope Paul III (the same pope who approved the founding of the Society of Jesus), who invoked the obedience of Ignatius and ordered him to accept Roser’s vows.
On Christmas Day 1545, Isabel Roser, her lady-in-waiting Francisca Cruyllas, and her friend Lucrezia di Bradine took their especially formulated vows of poverty, chastity and obedience before Ignatius. Unfortunately, Roser turned out to be a cross too heavy for Ignatius to bear, and two of her nephews, disinherited by her donation of her estate to the Society, sued in a church court claiming that the Jesuits had stolen her fortune. To cut a long story short, in November 1546, less than a year since the three women took their vows, Pope Paul III transferred their vows to a diocesan bishop. In May 1547, Ignatius asked the Pope to release him and the order from the care of women in organized communities, and the Pope obliged with the 1549 document Licet debitum. Roser returned to Barcelona where she continued to do good works. She later entered a Franciscan convent in Jerusalem where she lived until her death.
What is not so well known is that there was another woman who took her vows as a Jesuit and died as a Jesuit: Juana de Austria, daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (who is also Carlos I of Spain and known to most Filipinos today as a brandy trademark) and Isabel of Portugal. As mother of the King of Portugal and Queen Regent of Spain, for her brother Philip II, hers was a case hard to refuse. Widowed, she lived a monastic life and even took vows as a Franciscan, but later chose to become a Jesuit.
Juana de Austria was admitted to the Society with the vows of a scholastic, a form devised by Ignatius, that bound the princess but reserved to the Society the right to release her from vows. All this was kept secret, and she corresponded with the Society hidden under the name, Mateo Sanchez. While she was not a fully professed Jesuit, she was a secret Jesuit from 1554 to her death in 1573. Church his-story, when made into her-story, can be a lot stranger than fiction.
....While there was no female pope, history does record the existence of a woman Jesuit. While the constitution of the Society of Jesus specifically forbids its members to work regularly with women, and provides against the establishment of a women’s branch of the order, and regular spiritual direction of women, there was one woman, Isabel Roser, who would not take no for an answer. Roser was a childless, wealthy Catalan who was the benefactress of Ignatius Loyola. When she was widowed in 1541 she followed Ignatius to Rome and pestered him to accept her vows as a Jesuit. After two years of vain pleading, she went to Pope Paul III (the same pope who approved the founding of the Society of Jesus), who invoked the obedience of Ignatius and ordered him to accept Roser’s vows.
On Christmas Day 1545, Isabel Roser, her lady-in-waiting Francisca Cruyllas, and her friend Lucrezia di Bradine took their especially formulated vows of poverty, chastity and obedience before Ignatius. Unfortunately, Roser turned out to be a cross too heavy for Ignatius to bear, and two of her nephews, disinherited by her donation of her estate to the Society, sued in a church court claiming that the Jesuits had stolen her fortune. To cut a long story short, in November 1546, less than a year since the three women took their vows, Pope Paul III transferred their vows to a diocesan bishop. In May 1547, Ignatius asked the Pope to release him and the order from the care of women in organized communities, and the Pope obliged with the 1549 document Licet debitum. Roser returned to Barcelona where she continued to do good works. She later entered a Franciscan convent in Jerusalem where she lived until her death.
What is not so well known is that there was another woman who took her vows as a Jesuit and died as a Jesuit: Juana de Austria, daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (who is also Carlos I of Spain and known to most Filipinos today as a brandy trademark) and Isabel of Portugal. As mother of the King of Portugal and Queen Regent of Spain, for her brother Philip II, hers was a case hard to refuse. Widowed, she lived a monastic life and even took vows as a Franciscan, but later chose to become a Jesuit.
There was never a Pope Joan. Protestant historians showed this to be the case after earlier Protestants ballyhooed the phony charge.
Case closed.
See here: http://www.holyspiritinteractive.net/columns/guests/patrickmadrid/popejoan.asp
And here: http://jimmyakin.com/library/womens-ordination-its-infallible
In your dreams, honey, in your dreams.
BTW, honey, it should be "is" light years away.
This must have been written by Barack Obama. In every writing sample known to exist, he botches up agreement of number. Bill Ayers, of course, wrote Dreams from My Father.
That bogus garbage was Renaissance IQ test and anyone who believed it flunked the test.
So, does someone posting the article mean the poster thereof believes there are a lot of people on FR who will flunk the IQ test or does it mean the poster flunked the IQ test?
Those pushing ordination of women are accusing Christ of sexism; did God make a mistake?
Wishful thinking from people who haven’t had a Christian thought in decades...
“Then there’s this Catholic saint::
And then you link to a webpage that says this:
“Never recognized officially by Catholic Church”
Hence, no “Catholic saint”. Nice try.
I was really amazed to hear of this “dog saint” awhile back, and it happened to come to my mind when I read this story. In no way did I take it seriously or think anyone else would think that I was, so I was surprised to read your reply. But one thing I didn’t know about this until I went to the Wikipedia article this morning is that some Catholics believed miracles were done by or through this dog. Quite something.
“...some Catholics believed miracles were done by or through this dog. Quite something.”
In itself, it isn’t impossible for God to work through an animal (Numbers 22:21-38), or a handkerchief (Acts 19:12), or bones (2 Kings 13:21).
The dog even got his own Free Republic thread!
In the diocese of Lyons, near the enclosed nuns' village called Neuville, on the estate of the Lord of Villars, was a castle, the lord of which and his wife had a baby boy. One day, when the lord and lady had gone out of the house, and the nurse had done likewise, leaving the baby alone in the cradle, a huge serpent entered the house and approached the baby's cradle. Seeing this, the greyhound, which had remained behind, chased the serpent and attacking it beneath the cradle, upset the cradle and bit the serpent all over, which defended itself, biting the dog equally severely, Finally, the dog killed it and threw it well away from the cradle. The cradle, the floor, the dog's mouth and head were all drenched in the serpent's blood. Although badly hurt by the serpent, the dog remained on guard beside the cradle. When the nurse came back and saw all this she thought that the dog had devoured the child, and let out a scream of misery. Hearing it the child's mother also ran up, looked, thought the same thing and screamed too. Likewise the knight, when he arrived, thought the same thing and drew his sword and killed the dog. Then, when they went closer to the baby they found it safe and sound, sleeping peacefully.Casting around for some explanation, they discovered the serpent, torn to pieces by the dog's bites, and now dead. Realizing then the true facts of the matter, and deeply regretting having unjustly killed so useful a dog, they threw it into a well in front of the manor door, threw a great pile of stones on top of it, and planted trees beside it, in memory of the event. Now, by divine will, the manor was destroyed and the estate reduced to a wild land, and so was abandoned by its inhabitants. But the peasants, hearing of the dog's conduct and of how it had been killed, although innocent, and for a deed for which it might have expected praise, visited the place, honored the dog as a martyr, prayed to it when they were sick or in need of something..."
It is at the end of his text that de Bourbon assures his audience, the Church authorities, that he then called together the residents and had them destroy the shrine, which included burning the remains of the dog. Or so the righteous friar thought, for the peasants "proof" of this destruction must surely have been falsehoods created to appease the monk, and more importantly, to thwart the wrath of the Holy Roman Church. The least of this wrath could involve the seizure of their meager yet essential possessions, the most of it could mean the loss of their lives. For not only did this shrine continue to exist for another 700 years, researchers to almost the mid twentieth century found evidence of its viable use. The reverence that the people of the Dombe region had for their little saint was stronger than their fear of retribution by a very powerful force.
-- from the thread Guinefort: the Sainted Dog of France
God can work through anything, but He will do so only in ways perfectly consistent with His holiness. He isn’t the author of confusion. As was pointed out in a Bible study I once did, it is expressed at least once in the Gospels that the chief reason God does miracles, including healing ones, is to demonstrate His power so people will believe on Him. If physical health was His highest desire for us, He could just heal everyone of everything all the time, but He doesn’t. And miracles done that only heal the body and don’t affect the soul do nothing eternally. And would God encourage people to believe that a dog could be a saint? Doesn’t that contradict so many Christian truths? Roman Catholicism has a history of being a fertile ground to a lot of syncretism, with just two recent examples being “Santa Muerte” and “Saint” Hugo Chavez. One thing that seldom gets mentioned here, and which I really haven’t looked into much, especially recently, is Catholic “patron saints.” It’s concerning that, for example, that statues of a patron saint, Joseph if I recall correctly, get buried in people’s yards to facilitate selling their homes.
Thanks for the ping. It was interesting to read what you posted about it because there was even more to the story than I’d heard. And I’d be surprised if some people today weren’t worshiping this dog.
“Roman Catholicism has a history of being a fertile ground to a lot of syncretism,”
No. Paganism has a history of being a fertile ground to a lot of syncretism. Whatever Christian group they meet they will adopt some things from it.
Even other Protestants accuse more mainstream Protestants of syncretism along with Catholics: http://www.cogwriter.com/christianity-mithraism.htm
Protestants, being confused as it is, have a long and confused understanding about what is and isn’t syncretism anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretistic_controversy
Confusion today among American Protestants is furthered by the almost complete ignorance they hold about the reality of Protestantism around the world. How many arrogant, boastful and ignorant American Protestants - who assume syncretism is a Catholic-only problem - have any idea who Mercy Amba Oduyoye is? She’s a Methodist theologian who talks about “creative syncretism”. And most Protestants, especially the Anti-Catholic variety, are simply too ignorant to even know she exists or that she speaks for what many millions of Protestants in Africa are doing.
You might want to read Birgit Meyer, “Beyond Syncretism: Translation and Diabolization in the Appropriation of Protestantism in Africa,” in Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis, edited by Rosalind Shaw, Charles Stewart, (New York, 1994).
DeBernardi shows that the syncretism is coming from the pagans (i.e. largely from people who have never been baptized Christians at all): http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:yIQ3ESACgFsJ:https://www.ualberta.ca/~place/REV%2520DeB%2520syncretism%252008.doc+&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Pentecostalism - a truly modern Protestant thing even though it is growing in the Catholic Church today - is the single greatest vehicle for syncretism in Africa and Asia and South America today. A number of scholars have pointed this out. You can look that up yourself.
Most Protestants in America are too stupid to know or realize any of this. They don’t know that syncretism is common in African Protestant sects and has been so since Protestants arrived there, for instance.
Well, calling people, in particular other Christians “stupid,” is not Christian. There are a number of New Testament passages directly speaking to that.
And your sources don’t really prove anything. What does what a liberal feminist theologian says matter? Similarly, another source is a secular female scholar. Then another is a “Church of God” writer. That’s Herbert W. Armstrong’s cult, formerly the Worldwide Church of God and now the Continuing Church of God. They believe in sabbath-keeping, for one thing, against the clear New Testament teaching.
And on problems in evangelical Christianity, of course there are many. The difference is, we actually talk about them and attempt to do something about them. I am well aware that syncretism is an issue in many places, including now the United States (and I have no problem using the term “syncretism” in its modern usage, as it has come to mean now, since word meanings do change over time, and it’s used as it is to name something that is all too real), and I’m sure other evangelicals here are, too, since such topics just come up. When God’s Word is being is being mixed with the doctrines of demons, that’s fundamental error.
The willingness to acknowledge the faults that are there in our churches is very different from Catholicism, where the first reaction is denial. We don’t have such denialism since we don’t claim exactly the same things that the Roman Catholic Church does. Here in this post you fault paganism, Protestantism, and more specifically, Pentecostalism, but don’t touch syncretism and the Catholic Church, especially to fault Catholicism itself in any way. You believe in the perfection of Catholicism, so any problems have to lie elsewhere. We don’t believe in the perfection of any church, or the Church, on earth. It’s obvious, just for one thing, that we don’t hold all things in common, as the early church did, and even that wasn’t perfected yet.
On syncretism over all, that’s a large topic. The Wikipedia article ties it to Protestantism in Africa and Roman Catholicism in South America. I would have to spend a long time researching all sorts of things about it to feel that I’ve got an adequate picture of what’s happening in different places, and to this point, I haven’t. I might very well in the future, but to this point I’ve had other things to study first.
“Well, calling people, in particular other Christians “stupid,” is not Christian. There are a number of New Testament passages directly speaking to that.”
When you say that to Protestant anti-Catholics, I’ll take you seriously.
Weren’t you talking directly to me and using those words, while I wasn’t?
Again, when you say that to Protestant anti-Catholics I’ll take it seriously. Until then, no.
By the way, you wrote this:
“I would have to spend a long time researching all sorts of things about it to feel that I’ve got an adequate picture of what’s happening in different places, and to this point, I haven’t. I might very well in the future, but to this point I’ve had other things to study first.”
Don’t you think you should know what you’re talking about before you start posting about it? Don’t bother answering. The answer is obvious.
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