As both a medievalist and a feminist I have mixed feelings about this. The latter part of me wants to wave my hands impatiently because I find it difficult to get excited about an institution that privileges straight men quite as sanctimoniously as the Roman Catholic Church does. Pope Joan would NOT approve (nor, for that matter, Mary Magdelene, the Virgin Mary or St. Bridget). This argument that the Big Guy Himself didn't have disciples does not hold water with me--any way you read the Gospels, Mary Magdelene was a privileged follower of Christ [and in fact was the first one to see the risen Christ on Easter. She also stayed at the Cross when pretty much all the rest of the dudebros had bailed. Take THAT, St. Peter!]. Another strong feminine presence in the early church was St. Bridget who was either officially ordained as a bishop or did an awfully good imitation of one, running what was essentially a co-ed monastery and bossing all the monks around. Gotta love those headstrong Celtic women during the Dark Ages!
On the other hand...as an historian, I find the whole business FASCINATING--papal history is chock FULL of piping hot dish. I've talked before about the skanktastically dysfunctional Borgias but they are just one episode in what needs to be a trashy reality show on the History Channel: The Real Vicars of Christ [or as post-1534 Henry VIII might call it, The Real Bishops of Rome. Oooh, SNAP, Henry]. One of the most awesomely gruesome chapters in papal history has to be the Shake 'n' Bake Papal Viewing of Pius XII in 1958. Pius had a couple of questionable characters in his household: a VERY devoted housekeeper known as La Popessa who ruffled bishopric feathers by controlling who got to speak with Pius, as well as an outright quack who had a great idea after the Pope's death--let's preserve the earthly body of the Holy Father with this newfangled spray-on embalming process! We'll put him in a plastic bag with herbs and oils and spices--that sounds perfectly legitimate and not sketchy at all. Only he forgot about Rome's heat--the corpse turned black and literally cooked in the coffin, which resulted in the bier's actually CRACKING OPEN from...gasses. The Swiss Guard had to be spelled every few minutes as they were fainting from the stench, and Pius's nose fell off.
But even that shitshow has to pale next to the Cadaver Synod, aka Zombies on Trial. I'll leave that for another post, along with the Pornocracy--yes, there really was a period in papal history called the Pornocracy, the Rule of Whores. [I like to imagine Mary Magdalene up in heaven, hiding a giggle behind her hand after so many centuries of being trashed as a prostitute. The Da Vinci Code's history was, uh, creative at best but it was certainly right about that slander.] And if the new Pope seems a bit uptight compared to his colorful predecessors, let us imagine Alexander Borgia slapping a goblet of wine into his hands and saying impatiently
