FOUR hours of this??? Wonder why REELZCHANNEL hasn’t faded off into the sunset in favor of, oh, the Barbie Channel or some such.

Four hours, and presumably the second part will air on Christmas night. Typical of the media to air anti-Catholic stuff in time for a Solemnity.

If I don’t have something better to do - like counting specks on the ceiling - I might tune in.  Is it really 4 hours though?  I wonder who’s sponsoring it?

Reelzchannel, Pope Joan can haz cheezburger?

“...presumably the second part will air on Christmas night. Typical of the media to air anti-Catholic stuff in time for a Solemnity.”

Kind of heartening, in a crazy way. When publicity !@#$% need some way to get attention and generate controversy, one of the few things they can still find to desecrate - the only thing still holy enough to generate any really satisphying sense of blasphemy - is the Catholic Church.

Oh, sorry about the “!@#$%” thing, above.

Also, don’t quite know why I misspelled “satisfying”.

P.S. - TV’s Pope Joan looks like Queen Amidala.

Just sayin’.

This is not good news. I teach at a Catholic high school and I have heard a few of our students talk about the female Pope. Where did they learn about this?...in religion class.

“Filed under anti-catholic, dan brown,...”  that says it all.  the b$%^&* dan brown started it all.

Sorry benjie, anti-catholicism has been around a long time. Apparently, REELZCHANNEL (they also shout their name) has serialized a novel, but would like to get a bigger audience so they suggest non-fiction. I suspect that it will not, unless they add the sex that raised Dan Brown from the hackdom he started in.

Nothing new here, been around for a while. Protesting may bring more publicity I fear. Protesting a real, living play or film or TV programme is different- such as Pamela Anderson playing the Virgin Mary on the CanadianBS soon.  Teaching the next generation or two about the “warts and all” history of the Church, and political personages is more healthy than portraying them as perfect moral characters. The Pope Joan fable fits in with the Borgias, a fake story about her, with very real sinful men in the Vatican. As long as we point out there were saintly cardinals and Popes at the same time.

Oh man.  Is there no end to the assault on the Church on the part of the media?  It’s never ending.

Still waiting for these opportunists to do a made-for-tv special on Muhammad and his factual antics.  There’s lots of salacious stuff that’s historical record - I’m sure they’ll be right on it!

You are so right, JamesIgnatius.  But you know what?  The opportunists know that if they did anything Islam or about their “worshipped” Muhammad, a mother-of-all Jihad would be unleashed in U.S. of America. But as HermitTalker says, there is nothing new in attacking the Catholic Church during the Holy Liturgical Season.  You can bet your last American Dollar another blasphemy about Jesus having been married to Mary Magdalene and that He did not die on the Cross but escaped and lived somewhere in Europe or Asia and beget 10 or 12 children will hit the Media Circuits around Easter next year. But, hey, if the Catholic Church was not Holy there would be no point in trying to desecrate it.  We also experience in this part of the World Freemasons and Devil Worshippers stealing the Holy Eucharist during Easter for the Black Mass.

A dear friend gave me a new twist to an old truth: “They do not kick a dead dog.” The Church is the Body of The Christ, is alive and well and is still bfreathing even if many have tried to kick it to death since they got Jesus on the Cross to get rid of Him!

Interesting thoughts Mr Akin… have you read the
book? Did you watch Diane Sawyer on the Primetime
special about Pope Joan? Have you talked with
Donna Wolfolk Cross about the research she
did while writhing her story?
You see there is a large number of people who
are VERY excited to see the movie…we read the book,
we discussed the research, we made up our own
minds what we believe or not….but isn’t that our right?
This movie has hit road block after road
block, as a fascinated fan of the novel ... I’m
thankful REELZ is taking the risk of showing it!!

Mr.Akin, please provide your facts for how you are
an authority on Pope Joan never existing…is it your love of
censorship?

Also give people credit…we can decide what
we believe is real, we do that every day listening
to our politicians!

How ludicrous. How could a woman get through a male educational environment, become a priest, bishop and cardinal and he elected Pope?It reminded me of Mrs Doubtfire urinating in the mens’ urinal with the kid watching.

“love of censorship?” How about disdain for slyly implying a fiction is factual. That you consider Diane Sawyer an authoritative expert on Church history speaks volumes.

Here’s a suggestion. Stop trusting commercial broadcasters who are in business to sell airtime to advertisers at ever increasing rates, turn off your TV and read Thomas E. Woods’ book “How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization” and see if you can figure out with the author why so much pivotal history discovered over the last 50 or so years remains omitted from syllabi everywhere. After a few decades of this observable pattern, it starts to look biased.

You’re obviously a fan of this myth. The problem with a myth is that people believe it without knowing why. The whole point of apostolic succession is precisely that we DO know why. The reason this myth isn’t documented in history us that it never happened. Are you suggesting reading the book changes the nature of its subject from fictional to factual?

Jimmy points out the non-reality this film is based on, and you make some bizarre reference to his “love of censorship.” Clearly you are shilling for this commercial publishing and broadcasting enterprise.

I love how some people have so gustily guzzled the modernism koolaid about the past, that they buy the idea that all of our ancestors were little more than babbling, drooling dolts barely able to tell the difference between a male and a female. Except perhaps for one who outsmarted all the rest. To me, THAT is the REAL story to “consider.” Or maybe that should be “REELZTORY”

I am left sad at your misconception of my response.
Yes,I love a well written story…and love to wonder whether it could have happened. I don’t live in your world that all is perfect with human nature, regardless of the religion. It’s leaders are human. Things happened in history, and we need to question and learn. Why is it such
an autrocity for the church to consider Pope Joan? 

I also contend with your condescending tone.  Your superiority leads me to want to watch this movie even more!  I’m sytmied by your superiority over the rest of us dumb heathens. I enjoy socializing with friends, reading a variety of books (perhaps historical fiction, but for us to decide), and watching the movie adaptations leading to more question.
We also simply appreciate discussing whether the story closely followed
the book, or why not.  Appreciating the music scores, the sets, the acting, the clothing, etc. Why was it produced in Germany?

We have all recently lived with the horrific knowledge that some of the priests weren’t perfect, they are human. So please, stop trying to censor something so simple and help us embrace learning about our church’s history, it’s people, and life lessons.  If you don’t believe, wonder why people want to?  Watch the movie, read the book and discuss it in religion class…or church book reviews.  Invite question, and discussion…you may get more people coming back to the church!

Please note…no where in my response did I say I believed Pope Joan was real, nor did I say Diane Sawyer is an authority. If you saw PrimeTime,
you’d know she only reported on the plausibility, the huge following,
and the story researched and written by Donna Wolfolk Cross. 

Open your eyes and watch the movie…, or purely enjoy it for it’s entertainment.

Oh goody!  Now that The Borgias is into reruns I can watch this!  Since religious history sells on TV when focused on sex and violence maybe I can also expect a miniseries on Mohammad?  The prophet’s caravan raids, his dozen or more wives (who can keep track?) - highlighting his favourite, A’isha, whom he married when he was 51 and she was six (but waited three years to consummate), his sex slaves (that his “right hand possessed”), his beheading of 900 Jews and then raping the beautiful (and now widowed) 19-year old wife of one, etc.

Will it be out in time for Ramadan?

I guess this is a channel that nobody gets. If a show like this got on the Discovery Channel all the liberal commenters at the other NCR would be attacking regular Catholics for not accepting women priests when history has proven that a woman was Pope.

Thank you, HermitTalker. One needs to remember the rigorous physical examinations that are carried out on those who apply to join Seminaries.  It has always been mandatory for all applicants to Priesthood these 2000+years. So, there is no way a woman could enter a Seminary, be ordained a Deacon and then a Priest, proceed to become a Bishop, and Archbishop, a Cardinal and then a Pope. In any case, the Catholic Church History is well documented, warts and all. And thank you, Kevin, for your response to Sara. Sadly, she will not buy your very balanced and accurate comment. LJ, if anyone dared to denigrate “Prophet” Muhammed, the entire Muslim world would rise to a man and all of us, infidels and kafirs would be in mortal danger of total annihilation.

I’ll say it’s a channel nobody gets. See here’s how it works, folks. Hate the Church? Make up a weird tale and stamp your little foot and shout words like censor (and especially “racist” that’s a really good one) at anyone who realizes it’s objectively false. Accuse anyone pointing out the natural law of “being on the wrong side of history” for extra style points. That’s how you replace history with something you pull out of your..  Uh.. Boot.

But wait, didn’t Goebbels try that?

@Jimmy - Where you’re writing, you’re largely preaching to the choir, with the exception of the ample supply of trolls out there.  I had never heard of the Pope Joan hoax, but I can understand how it will be easy for the gullible and enemies of the Church to soak it up.  I have no intention of supporting Sara’s commentary, but I think you would still have done everyone a service if you had given us a few more facts about how the hoax started so that when we have to defend the Church against the trolls and their allies out there, we will have something more concrete than your disparagement of the media that produces this drivel.

But how do you find out facts about something that never happened? As I recall when National Geographic channel made a “making of” doc about The Davinci Code (in which Dan Brown played a fantasy writer) they came up with Brown’s self-styled “Catholic Researcher”—whatever that means—and we all know about the rest of THAT fantasy story. I wonder if this gadgetry starts off with a disclaimer? “True, Reality-Style, Fact-Like Process Conceptualization Product. Every frame of this film has been researched and certified as real, true, actual, not-fake, not-unreal really-real film by the finest processing lab we could get an account from. Everything you see in this film was made by aiming the camera at really life-like actors standing where our equally life-like director put them. Every effort has been made to ensure that only words from actual languages were used to create the story which we recorded. You can rest assured that the art-imitating-fake film you are about to enjoy is extremely hot.”

Sisters and Brothers May I use a down-home line from the Ozark Mountains One cannot win a urine contest against a skunk. Except they say youz and another word for urine.

Does Ron Howard play the part of Joan & why would Sara waste her time reading fiction when she could read about the lives of The Saints of The Church? At least this “series” might take some relief from Obamanism for a few hours for those fruitcakes that will watch it, but wait, Obamanism is also made up except for the fact that it is very dangerous to America & also to the world.  +JMJ+

Jamesignatius,how dare you suggest that Mr Mohammet was a murdering thug and pedophile! After all he founded a “great monotheistic religion” so we are told by the dialogue-crowd. Tsk tsk on you!

Recently on PBS they mentioned that some accuse the Vatican of smuggling Nazis out of Europe after world War II.  Had that special mentioned that what the O.S.S. suspected was that those Nazis gave themselves false Jewish identities and that the O.S.S. was worried that those Nazis might have gone on to found the modern state of Israel, that special would never have made it to the “REELZCHANNEL,” let alone PBS.

Sara,

If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride!
An old saying , yet still venerable!

The VAT WW11 verifiable story is better. Pius X11 ordered all reliigous houses in Rome to hide Jewish kids, they got special passes to be protected as Catholics charges, not fake baptismal certs apparently. His work for them got praise from Rome’s Chief Rabbi after WW11 and he convereted to Catholicism after the war. SO much for the anti-Pius X11 lying stuff when even the NYT at Christmas 1944 said he was the only one of all leaders who defied Hitler in his own quiet way. NOT raeading crud from a teleprompter to PO Mussolini and Hitler. They had a plan to get him to Ireland which was neutral and Catholic if they came for him. That comes from a priest who worked in the Vatican with him later

I think this recipe is apropos to the textbook display of the New Media Revisionism above:

1. Concoct huge (in Goebbelsian sense) false narrative to “prove, once again” your chosen target is The Universal Villain(tm)
2. Tell George Soros to fully fund all production of book and screen version—because he will
3. Label anyone who notices operative lies within narrative as “racist”
4. Paste narrative into approved narratives pool of mainstream consensus media for future use on slow news days
5. Repeat until general public rises up and destroys enemy or it is suppressed through legislation.

I haven’t tried making this, but did I get it right?

1 WWJD and
2 see OZARK LINE above frome me. Save the carbon footprint!

If this “pope joan,” thing were actual, it would be recorded in the annals of history. 
No facts of this event exists.

Im sorry, I don’t think you understand. If we all just believe in the St Joan of Pope or whatever they call it myth, that will make it turn into common knowledge which is really really really super-de-duper truuuuuuuuuuuue(Tm). Why bother with facts when you can just make stuff up or make a movie from stuff somebody else made up. It costs a lot of money to find facts to support something that never happened. Much cheaper to commission such history.

ReelzChannel is available to satellite subscribers.

This isn’t the 1st movie about her either.  There was one made about her in the early 1970s.

Even though not getting enough attention, at least folks have written articles debunking the myth.

Just looking at that Photo above proves there is no way anyone would have mistaken that face to be the face of a man. And so, she could never, ever even have been admitted into the first rung of the process to receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders

Mary42:
Actually, I think that “she” looks like a guy in drag.

All I think of when I hear of “Pope Joan” is the pope ladies bread. My favorite cookbook is the 1964 Betty Crocker New Picture Cookbook. In the bread section is a recipe (and picture) for pope ladies. Apparently they were popular bread for News Years in England. They are meant to commemorate the supposed female pope (and mock Catholics). Far from looking like a lady, they resemble snowmen. I never gave it a thought until after I became Catholic. I was flipping through one day and saw it with new eyes. Kinda anti-catholic, I thought. No Catholics working at Betty Crocker?  At least they called her “mythical Popess Joan.” Kind of ironic considering Betty Crocker never existed either.

To anyone invested in this Pope Joan myth:

Are you familiar with Pope John Paul II’s 1994 encyclical “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis” which explains in precise detail why the Church has never had and never can have the authority under Christ to ordain women to the Catholic priesthood? If not, I have looked it up for you, directly from the Vatican’s website:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_22051994_ordinatio-sacerdotalis_en.html
Or if that link got chopped:
http://v.gd/4OSbxf

In order for the Pope Joan myth to be true, even if such a person had ever existed, this papal encyclical would have to be false. 

All Catholics believe this encyclical. All historians who don’t want other historians questioning their sanity and competence, do not believe there was a Pope Joan. Anything else is in the same league as a card game, except that spreading the myth further may tamper with people’s faith. 

Let me put it this way: If Jesus asks me at my particular judgment, “Did you spread that ‘Pope Joan’ thing around to anyone?” I want the true answer to be an unequivocal “No, Lord.”

What would you want YOUR answer to Him to be?

If I recall correctly, Pope Joan was a black legend that arose during the enlightenment to mock the Catholic Church. It was perhaps inspired by a misreading of the abbreviated form of the name Joannes (John) in Latin.

A quick Google search is enlightening. See the Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry on the subject:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08407a.htm

Anti-catholic forces are always manufacturing some stories to malign our name. We are free and so we can write anything At the most later it may be proved that what was written was incorrect. By the time the hurt is done damage is done.  So the best remedy seems to be to manufacture some funny stories about the manufacturer and producer by some in the catholic camp. May be we are more cultured and so hesitate to hurt anyone. So we suffer.

Did y’all ever hear about the cross dressing nun who stuck in a lacivious convent against his will.

It’s all here in this here fancy called book, “Mario Monk”

Sara, I sincerely hope you have read Blessed Pope John II’s 1994 Encyclical to the Bishops posted above by Kevin.  May I humbly answer the question you have asked above. “Why is it such an autrocity for the church to consider Pope Joan?” Sara, it is atrocious to blatantly lie to the world about our Catholic Church, Her Faith and Her History, because of the danger it poses of misleading millions of the Faithful whose Faith is not very well grounded.  And Jesus Christ Himself had very strong words about those who deliberately mislead the innocent. “It would be better if a mill-stone was tied to their necks and they be sunk into the deepest sea”. No one on this thread has used condescending tone, nor are we displaying “superiority over the rest of us dumb heathens”. Sara, by your very name, you are certainly not a heathen.  Only a Christian who does not know the history of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. It would be worse, if you are not willing to accept the truth and insist on believing that which is pure fiction created by malevolent forces to malign the Catholic Church.  In such instances, every Faithful Catholic is called upon to defend our Holy Mother Church by immediately responding and exposing the lie for what it is.  Jesus Christ Himself decreed that we do so, always and everywhere.

Except that anti-Catholics (most particularly the worst kind, the anti-Catholic Catholics), more concerned with currying favor with their friends the cool kids who always have an ever more sophisticated jab to land against the dearest faith if their very own tribe, than they are with seeking the truth, seem to have this idea that laughing along with the crowd while someone spits in the face of Holy Mother Church is somehow an exercise in ecumenism. It used to be that anti-Catholic bigots were very upfront about their disbarments: “Irish need not apply.” Cowards can be Catholic, and “little things” like the ‘Pope Joan’ crock, lead, like gateway drugs, to worse and worse things. See the weird “cross dressing” troll taunt above for instance. As the level of responsibility increases, so does the egregiousness of the crime. Jesus said “you are either with me or against me.” So we either laud, applaud and cluck over the most recently popularized anti-Catholic mockery, or we reject it outright for what it is. Opinions are either based on truths or on lies. And we all shall choose a side to defend.

Jim,
Is that a joke, referring to “the Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk,” a 19th-century anti-Catholic fraud, as “MariO Monk”?

Why not combine all their nonsense and do a show about a female space alien Pope predicted by Nostradamus? Sheesh….

@Sara
“Why is it such an autrocity for the church to consider Pope Joan?”

It is a rejection of Christ’s promise to guide & protect the Church. It is a statement that Jesus was either lying, or wrong in His statement. Either claim is intolerable, as it is not a condemnation of the Church so much as a denial of the fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, a full member of the Holy Trinity, & a core doctrine upon which all of Christianity hangs.

I’m not surprised to see people lapping up “delicious” stories & controversies & drama, but that they may seem “real” is more a testament to people’s ability to suspend disbelief than their ability to discern the truth.

The fact is that reality/truth, is not dependent on whether you agree with it or not. Historical “fiction” is by definition “feigned, invented or imagined”. It’s make believe - Not real, Not history, Not the truth. It doesn’t matter whether anyone finds it “plausible” or “compelling”. Nor does the amount of people who are fooled by a story make the story itself true.

As Will Rogers once said:

“The problem ain’t what people know. It’s what people know that ain’t so that’s the problem.”

I’m not interested in such a movie for either truth or entertainment. For one thing, there’s no truth in it, and for another, I don’t find it particularly entertaining to be told that Christianity is wrong, which is the necessary conclusion from saying that Christ was either wrong or a liar, and thus not part of the Godhead.

Perhaps time to move on. We have beaten this old mare in the ground?

@Sara

“Mr.Akin, please provide your facts for how you are
an authority on Pope Joan never existing…is it your love of
censorship? “

Proof? Any serious historian who is not an attention !@#$% will tell you that the Pope Joan story is a huge hoax.

Nothing against historical fiction, but telling fiction and telling it is history is deceiving people and only morons and dishonest people will condone such action.

What if I told a story on ABC claiming with some ‘shaky proofs’ that the Jews in the 1930’s were building a secret weapon to conquer the world (or even just Europe)  and Hitler actually saved us and is a hero…
Would YOU like if something stupid and outrageous like that was aired.

Hell it would outrage people and be censored even if I told it was just fiction in huge capital letters!

... and rightly so! I would be spreading anti-semitism in such a way, promoting hatred and racism.

Diane Sawyer is not much better. Instead of targeting Jews she is targeting the Church.

Hence your attack on Jimmy is quite hypoctite.

“Also give people credit…we can decide what
we believe is real, we do that every day listening
to our politicians! “

Right. Great job there… haha!

Because people are always wise… especially in masses.

I went to the Annuario pontificio, which is the Roman Catholic church’s official registry of all of the popes and at the time this “Pope Joan” was alleged to have been in office, there indeed is listed a discrepancy. It lists Benedict III as pope from 855 to 858. Then it lists (in italics, which is how all doubtful popes, antipopes, and persons formally erroneously listed as popes) Anastasius as being pope for 855. It then lists St. Nicholas I as pope from 858 to 867. In my mind this historical, official list, shows that indeed , in this period, something like this could have happened. Anastasius may well indeed have ran an evil agenda, which included erasing a record of a female pope that had a short lived reign under false pretenses. This would not be the only cover up in world history.

Please do a rerun.. miss part II

This is actually the first time I’ve even heard about this and it’s 20 Jan 2012 as I write this. “Pope Joan” is a side-winder attempt, once again, to condemn the Roman Catholic Church for not allowing women to become priests (in a personal note ... there is something slightly creepy and distinctly unfeminine about a woman wearing a Roman collar). They couch it under the mystique of a legend, mystery and myth when, it turns out there was no Pope Joan. That is sweet irony!

To all above, get ahold of the Oxford Dictionary of the Popes, to read in its appendix a concise refutation of the myth of Pope Joan by JND Kelly, a superb scholar and Protestant historian. He easily demonstrates the absurdity of this story and notes that the historical documents refute in themselves this alleged person having existed. Nothing about it appeared in the medieval literature until centuries after it supposedly happened. Rather, this fable appeared when the Roman people wondered why the route of the Papal Procession from the Vatican to St john Lateran’s Basilica was change to bypass a certain narrow ally way… (the ally was too narrow for the growing procession, but some imaginative character came up with a good yarn that this ally was the place that the alleged female impostor pope either died in childbirth or was torn to sheds by the mob when it discovered her true identity or both). Furthermore, all of the versions of this tale indicate that she was NEVER the pope, but a pretender since no one could validly be elected to the Papacy by deception nor assume Holy Orders by a false identity. Yes, like Showtimes’ The Borgias, it will be utter fiction placed in a historical setting (a few facts thrown in)—and people today who imagine they know everything there is to know about the Church without ever having studied a church book will lap it up like dogs at the watering dish. In the end, the story says more about the medieval Romans than anything else—they loved a good yarn, and the more bizarre the better!

Wow.  Anti- catholic?  I don’t think so .  A core message is let man’s thinking not be limited and it will always lead you back to God.  Have a little faith rather than fear.

Faith AND Reason is our cherished Catholic belief. IF thinking without the guidance of the Holy Spirit leads one back to God why did we get the Eastern Orthdox, Luther, Calvin Zwingli, the Radical Reformation- the Amish and Mennonits and the Bruders, Henry V111 and the English bishops, minus John Fisher-  and the 19th c. USA Mormons get. All cocked up.
To add to the mixture we have the AOG revision IN THE EARLY 1900’s of the ancient heresy to champion the Holy Spirit and deny the doctrine of Three In One equal as Persons, Jesus as God-Man and present in the Sacraments. Give me the papacy, faith AND reason any day, even the temporary confusion of power and cash with the later Middle Ages in the papacy.