Pope Joan

Get ready everyone.
A new movie is being filmed that, sadly, many will not recognize as fiction . . . . but as a real biography. You know the routine. We have been through this before with different levels of infiltration into our culture . . . think, Da Vinci Code.

This movie is about "Pope Joan," an alleged Pope in the middle ages who was secretly a woman. The film is scheduled to start filming next month and stars John Goodman. It is based on a 2005 book* by Donna Woolfolk which was touted as an historical (fiction?) novel.
I love how Creative Minority Report describes it: "The film looks to be heavy on the sex and pretty short on theology as the Pope's got a steamy love interest in the Vatican. You know, because too much theology might make it not suitable for children."

Here's the myth of Pope Joan, according to Patrick Madrid:
In the middle ages, an extraordinarily brilliant young woman entered a theological university disguised as a man. Her intellect outstripped her male classmates and she shot to the top rank of students. Her brilliance was so widely acknowledged that she eventually became Cardinal and finally "Pope Joan," by hiding her gender. No one knew she was a woman until, during a papal procession through the streets of Rome, she went into labor and gave birth to a child. She and the baby were killed on the spot by the crazed Catholic mob, enraged at her imposture.

Here is some more of what CCR says:

"So, the movie looks to be a whole forbidden love thing. Now, of course, there's no evidence of any of this being even close to true but believers point to the lack of evidence as proof of a cover-up by the Church. Convenient, right?

And you know that when this trash hits the screens, there will be many specials, documentaries, and promotional interviews about Pope Joan and female ordination. Fr. Richard McBrien will be quoted in the New York Times saying, "if it's not true it should be." Larry King will ask Bill Donahue what the female Pope might say about the Church if she were alive today and Donahue will actually explode right there in front of the cameras. And Pope Joan will still be seen by many "Entertainment Tonight" watchers as a real biography of one of the first feminists who made it to the top of the all boy's Catholic Church."

Remember Christ said His Church would be persecuted right till the end.

When people question me I do not plan to waste time debating whether there was ever a Joan. I think it makes sense to approach such discussions from a different perspective.

If there had been a female impostor pope, this would just mean that an invalid election had taken place, nothing more. Other invalidly elected claimants to the papal office have come and gone over the centuries, and the fact that a woman made that list would simply mean that a woman made that list, She would not have been pope - no one invalidly elected would be. And nothing in the Church's teachings about the papacy would be injured or disproved.

(Thank you Patrick Madrid for this wording!)

* This is not the first book written on this subject.
Emmanuel Royidis wrote the novel, Pope Joan (1954)
& Liv Ullmann starred in a film called, Pope Joan, in 1972