ABC, Diane Sawyer Push Anti-Catholic "Pope Joan" Tale
This is a photo of Sr Joan Chittister OSB(AKA Pope Joan) once described by Mike Wallace of 60Minutes as the spokesperson for the lunatic fringe(far left) of the Catholic Church. She's a nut job from my home town of Erie, PA. Every Good Friday one of her crazy nuns would dress up as a mime and drag a cross across town. I'm not sure why but it was very entertaining. I think she secretly wants to be a man but nobody will spring for the surgery. I've been waiting a long time to use this photo and here's my chance.NewsBusters is reporting..
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":
"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).
Next week Diane Sawyer is joined by Leonard Nimoy as the go In Search Of... the elusive Yeti.
posted by Pat Campbell @ 11:10 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
She looks a little bit like my mother.
Jim in PA
The whole Catholic Church is a lunatic fringe of the church I grew up with, that's why I left it.
"The whole Catholic Church is a lunatic fringe of the church I grew up with, that's why I left it."
Hey Anonymous I always love sweeping generalizations I wonder what people would think if you said all "Blacks" are lunatics or all "Jews" are a lunatic fringe? Bigotry is a funny thing isn't it?
On a serious note, if I give you Sr Joan Chittister's phone number could you talk her into leaving too?
Isn't sweeping generalizations the content of most of your show, especially most of the guests you have on.
Catholics are no more looney in standing up for what they want to believe than are any other people.
I was raised in the roman catholic denomination, went to eight years of elementary school with nuns and four years of high school with the same group that owns / operates Notre Dame University. It all seemed so hollow and silly; the only very serious part was the insistence upon maintaining power and control over the flock. The theology comes primarily from Sacred Tradition, which is a form of the condensed popular opinions of denominational leaders over the period of decades or even centuries. Sacred Tradition never fails to support maintenance of power and control over the flock and anybody else who can be convinced, coerced, or conned, while effectively denying Sacred Scripture whenever necessary to support tradition, Tradition, and Sacred Tradition.
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