How about the Catholic Church's current, but not-so-new-now Pope? And how about the process that got
him there?
Of course, absolute secrecy being what it is, not a lot about what actually went on inside the cloister made it out into the public discourse, despite the best efforts of folks like Anderson Cooper and the rest.
And feminist though I am, I’ve got to admit that from the outside, at least, I was more than a little fascinated by the patriarchal lock-step kabuki of it all, the exclusive boys’ club ritual played out in lavish vestments of crimson and white.
Of course, absolute secrecy being what it is, not a lot about what actually went on inside the cloister made it out into the public discourse, despite the best efforts of folks like Anderson Cooper and the rest.
And feminist though I am, I’ve got to admit that from the outside, at least, I was more than a little fascinated by the patriarchal lock-step kabuki of it all, the exclusive boys’ club ritual played out in lavish vestments of crimson and white.
But now close your eyes for just a tiny minute. As your mind
settles down into the shaded blankness, let your brain imagine a solitary
marble chair. Purple in color, large and hard, more like a kind of throne, really,
its purpose to impart an aura of solemnity and conjure the heady scents of religiosity and power.
Now. Imagine said purple chair with a big ol' hole in its
center - like a birthing seat, maybe. Or an elaborate bedside commode. And
while you’re at it, imagine the chair’s occupant as a new prospective Pope.
Quiet, reserved. Smiling serenely at a few select and esteemed male colleagues.
But the purple chair in question isn’t simply some esoteric aid to sexual pleasure; so when
someone reaches a hand beneath the hole in the chair’s middle, the logical
question, naturally, becomes why? So that the old man’s genitals might be
vetted, of course. So that the Church might make perfectly, intimately certain
the person with whom it was dealing was, in fact, a man.
So picture it, won’t
you?
Penis? Check. Testicles? Check. All right then… as it's proclaimed from the balcony of the Sistine Chapel, “Habemus Papam," a phrase which translated from the Latin this means "We" (aka, those in the Catholic Church) "have
a Pope."
But enough of the disturbing imagery, I think… And of course,
I’m certainly not undeniably asserting that this is what actually went down in Vatican City a couple of
days before the Ides of March. After
all, the level of secrecy surrounding the whole affair situates age-old
whispers about the purple marble chair, and the ritual touchy-feely stuff, firmly
in the realm of speculation – nothing more.
Still, narratives of the chair, and the reason for its
existence, cling to their place in religious historical secrecy, a shrouded part
of the process of selecting a Catholic pope. And if you’re someone like me who
believes that the nexus of religion, patriarchy and power has spawned a void in
the historical record large enough to swallow a galaxy or two, there’s the
irksome little matter of the legend of Pope Joan – a cross-dressing woman around
AD 800, also known as English John.
As folklore has it, she was the one and only female Pope, and while she's said to have held the office for a relatively short time, her existence has always been vehemently denied
by the Church. No such person, the Vatican claims,
dismissing stories of Joan’s rise to pontiff as the perverted fabrications of a
pagan-hearted rabble over the long arc of time.
But really, what can you say about Joan, a woman in medieval
England
who cross-dressed her way through iron-fisted misogyny convincingly enough to
survive and thrive in the super-secret shadowy halls of early Christian
patriarchy?
In 9th century Europe ,
when women and girls were flat-out barred from education, the German-born Joan
was a formidable scholar who outshined her male colleagues, at least as
recorded by the historian Martin Polonus in the 13th century. According
to religious scholars who’ve been doggedly on her trail, it was only through strength
of intellect, moxie, and the ability to disguise her gender, that this female scholar,
proficient in arts and letters, rose in the ranks of the Vatican, first as
curial secretary and then, was appointed as Pope. Even today, detractors of Pope Joan
claim she was adept in the occult and in league with the Devil, no less. How
else could she have managed such a grand deception? Born female, after all. How
else, indeed?
Whether you actually believe in her existence or not, I suppose the
way she ended should come as no surprise. Legend has it that during her papacy
she got pregnant with the child of a close and trusted companion.
Unfortunately, she gave birth in the street during a papal procession, whereupon she and
her newborn infant were stoned to death on the spot, in the street between the
Coliseum and the Church
of St. Peter .
So what can we possibly make of the legend of Pope Joan? It's a cautionary
tale, perhaps, especially if we buy into the notion that murder-by-medieval-street-mob
is in the due course events, when presumptuous penis-less pretenders overstep
their bounds. And wouldn’t you know it? It was the waywardness of that wanton
female body that proved her undoing in the first place, of course!
Still, there’s plenty of gnarly stuff to go around when it
comes to organized religion’s often contorted view of us, and it’s surely not just the
Catholic church. In some places, menstruating women aren’t allowed to touch certain
images of the Buddha. Female members of some Jewish sects are still required to
visit a mikvah, a special ritual bath believed to cleanse them, body and spirit, after their
periods. And as troublesome as some of this may seem, the inherent implication
that there’s something faulty, lacking, and hopelessly deficient about female
bodies is what troubles me the most. After all, most of what we believe about
the perimeters of our sexuality is couched in the religious doctrine we’ve all been
marinating in over time.
But even now, as the new Pope Francis attempts to lead a world-wide
church racked with scandal and abuse - a church steeped in a flat-earth view of
women that’s based upon a notion of female bodily fault and deficiency - the tale of
Pope Joan endures, troublesome, outrageous and deliciously resistant.
I hope she’s watching...
I hope she’s watching...
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photo credit: <a
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photo credit: <a
href="http://flickr.com/photos/ferndinandreus/5858506889/">Ferdinand Reus</a>
via< herf="http://photopin.com">photopin</a><a
herf="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">cc</a>