“no one would have EVER HEARD of this supposed “Pope Joan”, had the Dominicans not spent centuries LYING about it.”

What did they lie about? Literally nobody ever believed that she was the Pope. And it’s impossible that the Dominicans would have believed it, or else they would have been excommunicated. Your evidence is, what? Someone had a statue? Does a statue make someone Pope? No, people had long forgotten about this nothingburger until Reformation Prots were digging the bottom of the barrel looking for shit to sling.

You Prots hate the Church so much you will literally grasp at straws to find whatever justification you can to hate it even more. So your big victory here is that a Protestant dug up a 400 year old urban legend, already long forgotten and never officially recognized, and debunked it? Way to go. Got us on that one. Tear the whole Church down and start over.

Just say you hate the Catholic Church and get on with it. Your reasons don’t matter, because as this “Pope Joan” fable illustrates, if none exist you will create them.

the cyborgs he usually posts

ON MONDAYS. Which is where they belong. I actively avoid such women on Fridays (most of the time).

I don’t think anyone is arguing otherwise that a female cannot be Pope. The point is that this “Pope Joan” thing came up centuries before the Reformation, because of Catholics – not Protestants.

Personally, I consider it an amusing distraction, and nothing more. Of the many things wrong with the Catholic Church, a supposed “female Pope” is both silly and unimportant.

the problem is NOT whether or not Joan was a pope / antipope / antipopess / fictional / real.
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as is typical with Catholics, you spend all your time trying to redirect obvious questions into bullshit minutia and irrelevant tangents.
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no one would have EVER HEARD of this supposed “Pope Joan”, had the Dominicans not spent centuries LYING about it. you had Roman Catholic churches placing statues of this fake popess on church grounds, it got so bad.
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further, it was a Protestant who conclusively debunked the Dominican’s lies. if an order specifically created to preach the Word (Ordo Prædicatorum ) and combat Heresy is saying things like this, are there any limits at all to the lies that an active order of the RCC can spread?
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I’m Catholic and have never heard of Pope Joan.
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yes, yes. next you’ll tell me that you’ve never heard of Marcial Maciel or the Legion of Christ.

I disagree. I am not a fan of the overdone fish-lip look. She looks a little more natural than the cyborgs he usually posts, although the boobs are as fake as any of them.

Look, you can call it reference or legend or whatever you want, but whoever this Joan was was never Pope. She can’t be the Pope, because woman. It doesn’t matter if you “elect” her, put the hat on her and kiss the ring, she’s not the Pope. That’s not how it works. Any Prot playing the “gotcha” game is simply ignorant of how things really work. A Pope has to be validly elected and if that didn’t happen, then either the Pope is someone else or the chair is vacant. There never was, nor could there have ever been, a “Pope Joan”.

Oh I remember reading about Pope Joan years ago, long before I ever bent the knee. I forget exactly where, it might actually have been on John C. Wright’s website. (He is a longstanding Catholic.)

The legend well predates the Reformation – apparently the first references to her are indeed among the Dominicans.

I’m Catholic and have never heard of Pope Joan. The story reeks of Prots throwing anything anti-Catholic they can at the wall and seeing if it sticks.