So the author Donna Woolfolk Cross who’s running around shilling her book about the historically elusive Pope Joan says that the Vatican is filled with a bunch of lying liars who lie when they’re pretending to tell the truth or something.
I’m actually not kidding. That’s pretty much her real point as a guest poster on the On Faith blog at the Washington Post.
Years ago, I was invited to a panel discussion about Pope Joan in Vienna, Austria. I read a chapter from my novel, and Peter Stanford, former editor of the Catholic Herald, spoke about the strong evidence in favor of Joan’s historical existence (in which he believes). Afterwards, Peter told me what happened when he met the curator of the Vatican archives. “There’s nothing here about Pope Joan,” the curator told him.
But what if the curator was practicing mental reservation? “There’s nothing here about Pope Joan” he could then say aloud, adding in his own mind, for God’s ears alone, “…nothing that is for you, or that you can see.”
That’s the high point of logic for the piece. Let’s recap. Someone who she knows who believes that what she wrote in a fiction book is actually true went to the Vatican where someone told him that they had nothing about Pope Joan.
AHA! That proves it!
And just when I thought this was the silliest piece…evah… I reread the introduction and if this isn’t the most blatant name drop in history, I don’t know what is. This is the intro graph of the piece:
“Where’s your skepticism?” Diane Sawyer, a brilliant interviewer who pulls no punches, asked me right after we sat down for an ABC Primetime piece on my book, “Pope Joan: A Novel.”
“Where’s yours?” I countered. “The record of the Catholic Church with regard to the truth, both scientific and historical, does not inspire confidence.”
You’d never know that interview took place in 2005. Four years have passed and her intro paragraph is still an interview with Diane Sawyer from four years ago? One has to imagine that the author mentions this every five minutes everywhere she goes.
Mam, you want fries with that?
Oh what a delightful question. It reminds me of a conversation I had with Diane Sawyer, the acclaimed journalist…
I’m sure that when the movie Pope Joan comes out we’ll be seeing a lot more of this author and she’ll have all new cultural references to bore us with like Bill Maher and Larry King.
July 7, 2009 at 5:42 am
Wait… there's going to be a movie?
July 7, 2009 at 5:47 am
Methinks she's been reading Dan brown too much.
July 7, 2009 at 5:54 am
Oh, great, now we'll have another standard where you have to teach basic history and reasoning, like "Hitler's Pope."
July 7, 2009 at 1:30 pm
If the Vatican says it doesn't exist, it must be true. If the Vatican says it must be true, it doesn't exist. Got it.
July 7, 2009 at 1:59 pm
So if the Vatican says that Cross' book is historically accurate, does that really mean it's not?
This is confusing.
July 7, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Well, maybe the 'Pope Joan' stuff is just misfiled in an envelope of receipts…. like the Templar stuff was! =)
Seriously, though–archivists are crazy, excitable people. If there was any documentary evidence for the legend, the archivist would be hopping up and down in his glee, eager to show the researcher these rare, priceless, and fascinating documents……
Besides, can you imagine the coverups? Unless Pope Joan was a total do-nothing, there'd be encylicals and bulls that would have to be suppressed. As well as all commentary on the encyclicals and bulls, and all commentary on the commentaries…..
You'd end up with this gaping hole in church teaching, and noone would notice that 30-some pages had been rasor-bladed out of every original copy of "insert famous theolgian here"'s work??????
And of course, gossip is a MODERN phenomena, so references to pope Joan wouldn't litter the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts, be worked into medieval dramas, and alluded to in art…..
And of course, ALL MEDIEVAL LORDS would have gone along with the supression, and there wouldn;t be any contemperaneous accounts anywhere….
You've got to feel sorry for the lady, though… she's still making the rounds on that one book…. talk about one-hit wonders….
July 7, 2009 at 5:53 pm
But what if the curator was practicing mental reservation?
Yeah. Real cute. Problem is one apply that question to everything anyone ever says. Radical skepticism devours itself again.
July 9, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Diedre Mundy, that was the best take-down of these amateur "researchers" I've ever read.
July 9, 2009 at 4:04 pm
The mental reservation attack is very nineteenth-century, since it was a standard anti-Catholic talking point then. It does have the convenience of being a universal response to anything you don't want to hear.