Customer Reviews

The She-Pope: A Quest for the Truth behind the Mystery of Pope Joan

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I was transfixed while reading POPE JOAN: A NOVEL by Donna Woolfolk Cross. At the end of her mesmerizing novel, Cross recommends additional reading which included POPE JOAN by Emmanoue Rhoide and THE SHE-POPE by Peter Stanford. I read both.

As a person who graduated from Catholic elementary school, high school and college, I have always accepted the existence of a female Pope. The nuns often said, "People are imperfect, but the Catholic Church isn't." The existence of a female Pope did not seem like a controversy. Well, it did not seem like a controversy until I stated reading about the defensive posture of the Church leadership described in Stanford's work. The Church hierarchy appears to be handling the Pope Joan issue in the same manner they have been handling the priest/pedophile scandals. If you trust someone, it is hard to tell if he/she is lying to you! If he/she lies to you, it is hard to trust them!

According to Stanford, arguments for and against the existence of Pope Joan are somewhat balanced. The strongest argument AGAINST the existence of Pope Joan is the Protestant Reformation. Because the Church's hierarchy is incapable of envisioning itself in an objective manner and is incapable to accept the possibility of corruption among its own leadership, the Protestant Reformation was born. Protestants reacted to the Catholic corruption by assuming that EVERYTHING must be a lie: A pattern of corruption leads to distrust. Yet, the fact remains, the Catholic Church could be telling the truth! So, researchers (i.e., Stanford) are forced into a position of searching for the truth without access to documents that would be the most revealing. The mere act of refusing access reinforces the position that Pope Joan existed. Thus, Stanford concludes that although the scales are quite balanced, the evidence is slightly tilted toward the existence of Pope Joan.

The reader is left with the impression that the 9th century is the most corrupt within papal history. This corruption creates fertile for the emergence of a female Pope. The organizational structure within the papacy allowed the position to be bought and sold. Many of those who employed money and political power to gain the papal position were just as likely to be amoral as intensely spiritual. However, I get the impression that some Popes had little spirituality. This lack of spirituality is a reflection on those who installed the Pontiff.

The basic question is: Does Stanford do a good job of exposing all the historical documents regarding Pope Joan? Based on the resistance he faced, I think he did an excellent job. Throughout the book, I found myself reversing positions more times that I can count. While reading one chapter, I would be convinced Pope Joan existed, but in the next chapter I would be convince that Pope Joan is just a myth. Such an unrelenting reversal of positions suggests that Stanford's work is well balanced. In the end, I accept the position I took while a student at Our Lady of Peace Elementary School - Pope Joan existed.

Footnote: Throughout reading Stanford's work, I was preoccupied into wondering what historical events were the catalysts for the emergence of the inequality of the sexes.

A fascinating exploration - Stanford shows how the story of a woman who became Pope in the Eighth Century (a native of Fulda of English descent, educated in Greece) deserves more than to be dismissed out of hand. We're guided through various medieval chronicles (and later Protestant polemics), the societal context of the age in which she supposedly lived, and various literary treatments over the centuries. He also talks about Joan with women who wish to be recognised as priests within the Catholic Church, and there's a remarkable interview with Ludmilla Javorova, who was ordained as a underground priest in communist Czechoslovakia.