Book Review Pope Joan

 

Was there ever a woman pope?

A related question is: could a woman successfully disguise herself, live as a man, and get away with it?

If you read this book by Donna Woolfolk Cross, you will see how it can be possible. But then a part of you wonders, can one really get away with it? It is, after all, fiction.

And yet the issue of a woman pope has certain pieces of evidence stated at the end of this compellingly written book that indicate that yes, there may have been a woman pope.

I tried googling “women who disguised themselves as men” and found that it has actually not been an uncommon thing historically. During the American Civil War, many women disguised themselves as men so they could fight. Conversely, there are stories of men who disguised themselves as women so they wouldn’t have to go to war.

Over the years, there are documents of women who disguised themselves as sailors or took on other male identities, usually to gain freedom and escape the restrictions placed on women at that time. Sometimes, they disguised themselves as men to go to war alongside the man they loved. At other times, they took on male identities because they were looking for love. And then there were those who pretended to be men for economic reasons, because they would not be able to find employment otherwise.

So yes, women have many times in history disguised themselves as men and for good reason, and gotten away with it. And yes, there may have been a Pope Joan who did so in her quest for learning, another gift forbidden to women at that time.

More compelling than the question itself is the history the book covers, the transition from paganism to Christianity under Constantine, and how people had to secretly pray to Thor and other gods while pretending to be Christian.

And the extensive writings about herbal medicine and the role it played in healing, and how it could lend stature to someone such as Joan to the point of eventually elevating her to become Pope.

These things interested me most – the extensive portions on alternative medicine, the history, the transition to Catholicism, the life in a monastery, the outer trimmings of ceremony and dress as compared to the secret goings on in mind and secret acts behind the pulpit.

https://www.amazon.com/Pope-Joan-Donna-Woolfolk-Cross/dp/0307452360

Magic Hand

Swan Song

Kat and I made this Swan Song because she is leaving for Australia.

Barack Obama

Dreams From My Father By Barack Obama

After reading "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" (see my previous book review) I was interested in seeing what Obama had to say about that author's claims that the USA conspires to keep poor countries poor, and ruins their natural resources for their own selfish purposes.

EXPERIENCES OF POVERTY

Indeed, Obama is no stranger to poverty. He was not born wealthy, and he lived for a few years as a child in Indonesia--not in wealth, but immersed in a poor environment. As an adult, he went to Kenya, his biological father's homeland, where his African relatives were also very poor.

But he does not adhere to any conspiracy theory. Instead, he says poverty exists whether you live in a third world country, or in the backstreets of Chicago (where he worked as a community organizer among the poor).

What Obama fails to mention however is that first world countries have a strong middle class, while third world countries do not.

PERSONAL LIFE

Obama best imparts how he dealt with loss in his personal life. As a child, his biological father abandoned him, and while there were a few letters through the years, and a one month visit as an adolescent, there was little else.

His mother's second marriage is what brought him to Indonesia, and he found many likeable traits in his stepfather. But that marriage ended up badly, too, resulting in his second loss. His mother, his half sister and he then moved to Hawaii, to live with his grandparents.

Obama's third loss was when his mother decided to go back to Indonesia, and asked him if he would like to go too. He declined, and so he lost both his mother and half sister, and grew up with his grandparents. This is a fine blueprint of bitterness, but you will never get any sensibility of that in his book.

DISCRIMMINATION

Obama chose to stay in the States because he wanted to discover his identity as a Black American. This was his situation: He lived with his white grandparents who nurtured and loved him, and went to a school where there were only three black students. He was at the age where he could already be sensitive to discrimmination.

And yet it was only in this way that he could hope to understand why his father left him. He juxtaposed the racism he experienced to its greater intensity in the past, and tried to comprehend why his mother chose not to go to Africa. Cultural differences, the shortcomings of society became his means to understand what he could never otherwise hope to know.

STRONG WOMEN

Obama grew up in an environment of strong women. His mother never failed to set his sights on higher things, ambitions and ideals. His grandmother, Toots was the family provider. She had a good career, and she paid all the bills. She also was so loved by him that he briefly stopped his presidential campaign so he could attend her funeral.

It has been said of late that Obama's half brother plans to write a book of his father's darker side. In this way, the President may finally learn what, all his childhood, he has never known.

WET EARS

If you read only this book, you will really presume that Obama lacks experience to be president, because it only ends with his work as a community organizer in Chicago and his trip to Africa. It does not touch on his studies in Harvard, and his work in the senate. But then, this book had different intentions.

WHAT I LEARNED

I realized through this book how difficult it must be to be a second class citizen in your own country. No wonder so many blacks had looked to Africa for their identity. No wonder black churches have an ebullience and energy unique only to them. The church is where they deal with discrimination and sift their experience through the Word of God. No wonder Jeremiah Wright would be Obama's pastor of choice for so many years. He could do all of the above better than many others.

Long ago I read a book by Jacobo Timmerman, a newsman who was imprisoned and tortured. He said the one thing most commonly brought up while he was tortureds was that he was a Jew. As if being Jewish , being himself, and being born were his biggest crimes.

Having a homeland, I now know, is a privilege I have taken for granted. Feeling at home in my country is a right that many others must fight for.

EVOLUTION OF RACISM

Since then, there are more complexities involved in racism, disagreements among mixed blacks and pure blacks, with lighter blacks considered "prettier" and who seem to have it easier. And yet I remember in my time that if you were white, but even had 1% black in you--even if it didn't show--you were black.

Obama asserts himself to be a man who is part black, part white, who ha lived partly in Indonesia, and is 100% American.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, By John Perkins. 

This book explains how large businesses, the American government, the World Bank et al collaborate to keep smaller countries poor and in debt, by convincing the leaders of developing countries to take on loans they could not possibly expect to repay maybe 30 years down the line. 

In the case of the writer, the product he sold was electricity. He would make proposals to government leaders with inflated expectations of growth and profitability. The catch – the United States would build it and costs would be paid by bank loans from the World Bank. 

And so when the leader takes it on, he sees that the electricity only caters to rich people, making the poor even poorer. And then there’s this debt to pay that keeps the developing country from using the money to build programs for the poor. In essence, America owns them and its global empire is expanded and the American company that builds the electric plant makes a lot of money to boot. 

The author does this in Indonesia, Ecuador, Panama, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. Sometimes he gets a shot of conscience and tries to tweak an agreement. He did this in Panama changing things in the agreement to ensure that the electricity would actually be designed to benefit the poor. He also speaks of his experience in Saudi Arabia, a country that is wealthy because they have oil, and they continually raise its cost, over and over again. The goal of the company the author worked for was to make money and persuade the country's leadership to accept their advice, to the point where the country will become "owned" by the United States. Saudi, for example, was owned when the two countries agreed that the US would build all the infrastructure that Saudi needs. However, the money for all these projects was placed in American banks, and both countries had to decide what projects the money would be spent on.

I enjoyed this book because the information is truly compelling and well written. It explains a lot of global events that we had been seeing in the past from a more in-depth and more informed point of view. I also loved learning about countries in South America, about rain forests, about indigenous cultures in these countries.

I was truly intrigued by what happened in Saudi Arabia, in the House of Saud, and how America made much, much more despite a less than perfect situation. Finally, there is the story of Iraq and Saddam, let me not even begin. This is a good read. Whether you agree with the writer or not, it is worth one's time. 

The future is best anticipated by being informed about current history. There is so much to learn, and so many viewpoints to consider. Anyone who is interested in entering the world of diplomacy should read this. Also anyone interested in history, or international economics. I actually think this book would be interesting to anybody at all.