Pope Joan: Subversive! Controversial! And, uh, not real

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a German movie about "Pope Joan" has been making some waves in Europe:

Her story was considered so subversive that for centuries the Vatican tried to expunge it from the records.

Now a film, which last week reached the top 10 box office list in Italy, has revived the story of Pope Joan - an Englishwoman who, legend has it, disguised herself as a man and became the only female pontiff.

The film will fuel debate over whether Pope Joan really existed or whether, as the Catholic Church maintains, she was a mythical figure used by the early Protestants to discredit and embarrass Rome.

And the kicker:

For a church that even today remains staunchly opposed to the idea of female priests, a female pope is anathema.

Impossible, actually, just as pizza and soda consecrated by a priest can never be the Eucharist, no matter how hip and trendy he might consider it to be. No amount of Church authority, pomp, or ceremony could ever make a woman (nor, for that matter, non-ordained lay person, etc.) pope, just as no amount of court rulings and gnashing of teeth by Those Who Know Best About the Need For Progress can make the union of two men or two women a marriage. Anyhow, I've not been able to find information about whether or not the movie will play in North America, but I assume it will make its way to DVD at some point.

Inside Catholic has just posted a 2001 book review by Sandra Miesel, "The Myth of Pope Joan," in which she writes:

Pope Joan is one of the most tenacious myths of the Middle Ages, told and retold by Catholics and anti-Catholics alike since the 13th century. It is said that beautiful young Joan, an Englishwoman born in Mainz, Germany, disguised herself as a man to gain higher education beside her scholarly lover. Her brilliance won her election as pope under the name John in 855 (some say 1100). After reigning less than three years, she bore a child during a papal procession and died immediately, either from childbirth or stoning. Subsequent popes are supposed to have avoided this shameful place and had their maleness verified during their coronation ceremonies, during which an inscription was read as a commemoration of Joan: "Peter, Father of Fathers, Publish the Parturition of the Popess."

Though long disproved by historians, this scandalous legend still requires an occasional rebuttal by Catholic apologists. But its relevance has been renewed by the clamor for women’s ordination and contemporary enthusiasm for gender-bending. Among past novels, Donna Woolfolkcross’s Pope Joan has been re-issued as a movie tie-in, and the ex-nun posing as a priest in Louise Edrich’s Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is a Joan-clone among the Ojibwe Indians.

The January 2008 issue of This Rock has a helpful piece, "The Popess Who Just Won’t Go Away", by Robert P. Lockwood, who states:

Let’s have a Catholic urban legend with a twist. This one dates from before the Reformation and its sources are therefore entirely Catholic. And in a final twist, the first widely accepted refutation came from a Calvinist scholar.

It is the legend of Pope Joan, allegedly the first and only woman elected pope. According to the story, she was pope in the ninth century during the so-called "Dark Ages" until her female identity was revealed. As old as the 13th century, and as recent as a 2005 ABC News "special," Pope Joan will be around as long as she serves an anti-Catholic purpose. She began as an anti-papal fable, persisted as nativist anti-Catholic propaganda, and has blossomed into a 21st-century feminist icon.

In many ways, Pope Joan fits the traditional Catholic urban legend. Take any historical period and she can be molded into a solidly anti-Catholic niche. In the 16th century, Protestant dissenters used her to illustrate the nadir of an ever-corrupt papacy. In the 19th century, she was portrayed as a woman violated and ruined by lascivious clericalism, symbolic of the perversity to which Rome had sunk. In the 21st century, she represents the empowered female who fought the intransigent sexism of the Catholic Church and who therefore had to be destroyed.

And Patrick Madrid, who addressed this topic in his book Pope Fiction, has recently posted a primer on the persistent myth:

A lot of things are said about the alleged "Pope Joan." Depending on who is telling the story, she was a courageous feminist, a clever opportunist, a brilliant scholar who couldn't make it as a woman in a man's world. She is said to have been a wise ruler and an astute theologian, though, oddly, no decree or theological teaching purporting to have come from her has made its way down to our day.

In any case, the fact is, there was no Pope Joan. She exists only as pure legend, but one that makes for a sexy story. And when it comes to sexy stories, you know Hollywood will try its hand at making a blockbuster out of this piece of pope fiction.

As with The Da Vinci Code, this latest bit of historical malarkey may provide some opportunities to discuss Church history and doctrine with folks. It will also be an opportunity to hear and endure more silliness, some of it sincerely naive and some it overtly nasty, from the usual suspects. It wouldn't surprise me if ABC or the History Channel had a special about how Pope Joan was both a Knights Templar, a Scottish Rite Mason*, and a Gnostic who was a direct descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene who also happened to pass along the sacred truths and secrets of ancient witchcraft, the pyramids of Egypt, and Tri-Lateral Commission—and who invented electricity, women's suffrage, and the Internet.

* Updated, per the good comment below.

Comments

[Ed Peters]

What you guys talking about? I can hardly wait for it to come to a dvd player near me. We roared, I mean ROARED, through the buffoonery of DVC, but this one, THIS is gonna be mind-blowingly stupid. Ice your soda, chill those brews, broil da burgers, and sizzle those ribs, we're gonna have a Pope Joan Party.

"The Devill, that Prowed spirit, cannot endure to be mocked." St. Thomas More.

[Robert Miller]

Let's say, for the sake of absurd discussion, that the story were true: What would it prove?

The Church, as we know, is unable to ordain a woman priest or bishop. The Pope must be a priest and bishop (even if thus ordained only on the day of coronation). So if someone defrauded the Papal electors into believing that he/she was eligible for ordination, he/she would no more be Pope than Hans Kung is.

This "legend" is incredibly perverse and silly business. At the time of the Reformation, it probably served the generally misogynist aims and actions of the anti-Marian, anti-Catholic, anti-women-Religious "Reformers". So don't be surprised if the Leadership Conference of Women Religious features a screening of the new flick at its next convention!

[Subvet]

" Pope Joan was both a Knights Templar and Gnostic who was a direct descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene who also happened to pass along the sacred truths and secrets of ancient witchcraft, the pyramids of Egypt, and Tri-Lateral Commission—and who invented electricity, women's suffrage, and the Internet."

No mention of the Masons?

[Christian]

Flogging the Pope Joan horse just shows you how desperate the anti-Cats are.

[Gail F]

Maybe it will be as good as that other German howler, "The Last Templar"!

[Margaret]

I heard she was killed by an albino assassin monk... :)

[Donna]

Actually, there is no requirement that the Pope first be a bishop, or a even a priest! It has never been done, and likely never will be, but technically a lay Catholic may in fact be elected to the Papacy.

As for the ordination of women to the priesthood or even the deaconate, the Church teaches that she does not have that authority, so that will never happen. That's fine with me.

[Carl E. Olson]

Actually, there is no requirement that the Pope first be a bishop, or a even a priest! It has never been done, and likely never will be, but technically a lay Catholic may in fact be elected to the Papacy.

That is true, as far as it goes, but if a layman were elected Pope, he would, according to the Code of Canon Law (pars. 330-2), have to be ordained a bishop——which means he would have to be an unmarried man of the proper age, etc.:

Can. 331 The bishop of the Roman Church, in whom continues the office given by the Lord uniquely to Peter, the first of the Apostles, and to be transmitted to his successors, is the head of the college of bishops, the Vicar of Christ, and the pastor of the universal Church on earth. By virtue of his office he possesses supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church, which he is always able to exercise freely.

Can. 332 §1. The Roman Pontiff obtains full and supreme power in the Church by his acceptance of legitimate election together with episcopal consecration. Therefore, a person elected to the supreme pontificate who is marked with episcopal character obtains this power from the moment of acceptance. If the person elected lacks episcopal character, however, he is to be ordained a bishop immediately.

Since the Pontiff does possess office or power until he is a bishop, the basic point still stands: a woman or unqualified man cannot be made pope.

[Kmbold]

I'll alert our parish's "pastoral assistant", one of the last members of her religious order, who takes delight in "reminding" us that "there is a legend that St. Brigid was a priest and that gives us hope, eh, ladies?". The resurgence of Pope Joan will be such a thrill for her. A religion of legends...