Controversies & Hidden History

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF

POPE JOAN

[Excerpted from Information found in research on the web]

The Setting

In the year 855, Europe was dominated by three great powers: the Roman Catholic Church, the remnants of Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire, and the marauding pagan tribes of Northern and Eastern Europe. The Church had grown to its position of power and influence by filling the vacuum left by the collapse of the old Roman Empire. Originally an underground institution forced to worship in secret in the old city, the Church was legalized with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, who re-located the center of the declining empire to Constantinople.
After Constantine, free to operate in public, the Church gradually began to assume many of the civil functions no longer performed by the government. In a document known as "The Donation of Constantine," the Church was given total political as well as spiritual authority over all things in the Western empire. By the year 800, they had taken control of most of Europe, despite periodic sacking of the city by the Goths or the Saracens of Africa. At this time, however, the great Frankish king, Charlemagne, conquered much of this territory in the name of the Church. The Pope, being somewhat uneasy at this accumulation of power in one man, offered to crown Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, and thereby appear to put him at the service of the Pope. Charlemagne refused, but in a clever maneuver, the Pope produced a crown and crowned the unsuspecting monarch publicly anyway. This established the precedent for Charlemagne's heirs to need the Pope's approval to ascend to the title of Holy Roman Emperor. His heirs needed the Pope's blessing as much as the Church needed the Empire's armies and funds.
The character of Louis is the historical Louis II, great-grandson of Charlemagne, actually crowned in the year 855. The character of Anastasius was indeed Anastasius Bibliothecarius, a Roman prelate who was briefly made pope and then deposed in the year 855. The character of Nicholas is the historical Pope Nicholas I, whose vision and organizational ability enabled the Church to wrest itself from the influence of the Holy Roman Empire and become the dominant political force of the Dark Ages until the Reformation. He was canonized a saint. The infamous Donation of Constantine, upon which the whole concept of the Church as a sovereign state is founded, was indeed discovered to be a forgery.
"Whenever you see a legend, you can be sure, if you go tothe very bottom of things, that you will find history." (Vallet de Viriville) Pope Joan is one of the most fascinating, extraordinary characters in Western history -- and one of the least well known. Most people have never heard of Joan the Pope, and those who have regard her story as legend.
Yet for hundreds of years -- up to the middle of the seventeenth century -- Joan?s papacy was universally known and accepted as truth. In the seventeenth century, the Catholic Church, under increasing attack from rising Protestantism, began a concerted effort to destroy the embarrassing historical records on Joan. Hundreds of manuscripts and books were seized by the Vatican. Joan?s virtual disappearance from modern consciousness attests to the effectiveness of these measures.
Today the Catholic Church offers two principal arguments against Joan?s papacy: the absence of any reference to her in contemporary documents, and the lack of a sufficient period of time for her papacy to have taken place between the end of the reign of her predecessor, Leo IV, and the beginning of the reign of her successor, Benedict III.
These arguments are not, however, conclusive. It is scarcely surprising that Joan does not appear in contemporary records, given the time and energy the Church has, by its own admission, devoted to expunging her from them. The fact that she lived in the ninth century, the darkest of the dark ages, would have made the job of obliterating her papacy easy. The ninth century was a time of widespread illiteracy, marked by an extraordinary dearth of record keeping. Today, scholarly research into the period relies on scattered, incomplete, contradictory, and unreliable documents. There are no court records, land surveys, farming accounts, or diaries of daily life. Except for one questionable history, the Liber pontificalis (which scholars have called a "propagandist document"), there is no continuous record of the ninth-century Popes -- who they were, when the reigned, what they did. Apart from the Liber pontificalis, scarcely a mention can be found of Joan?s successor, Pope Benedict III -- and he was not the target of an extermination campaign.
Joan?s absence from contemporary church records is only to be expected. The Roman clergymen of the day, appalled by the great deception visited upon them, would have gone to great lengths to bury all written reports of the embarrassing episode. Indeed, they would have felt it their duty to do so. Even the great theologian Alcuin was not above tampering with the truth; in one of his letters he admits destroying a report on Pope Leo III?s adultery and simony.
One need only look to the recent examples of Nicaragua and El Salvador to see how a determined and well-coordinated state effort can make embarrassing evidence "disappear." It is only after the distancing effect of time that truth, kept alive by unquenchable popular report, gradually begins to emerge. And, indeed, there is no shortage of documentation for Joan?s papacy in later centuries. Frederick Spanheim, the learned German historian who conducted and extensive study of the matter, cites no fewer than five hundred ancient manuscripts containing accounts of Joan?s papacy, including those of such acclaimed authors as Petrarch and Boccaccio.
Today, the church position on Joan is that she was an invention of Protestant reformers eager to expose papist corruption. Yet Joan?s story first appeared hundreds of years before Martin Luther was born. Most of her chroniclers were Catholics, often highly placed in the church hierarchy. Joan?s story was accepted even in official histories dedicated to Popes. Her statue stood undisputed alongside those of the other Popes in the Cathedral of Siena until 1601, when, by command of Pope Clement VIII, it suddenly "metamorphosed" into a bust of Pope Zacharias. In 1276, after ordering a thorough search of the papal records, Pope John XX changed his title to John XXI in official recognition of Joan?s reign as Pope John VIII. Joan?s story was included in the official church guidebook to Rome used by pilgrims for over three hundred years.
Another striking piece of historical evidence is found in the well-documented 1413 trial of Jan Hus for heresy. Hus was condemned for preaching the heretical doctrine that the Pope is fallible. In his defense Hus cited, during the trial, many examples of Popes who had sinned and committed crimes against the Church. To each of these charges his judges, all churchmen, replied in minute detail, denying Hus?s accusations and labeling them blasphemy. Only one of Hus?s statements went unchallenged: "Many times have the Popes fallen into sin and error, for instance when Joan was elected Pope, who was a woman." No one of the 28 cardinals, four patriarchs, 30 metropolitans, 206 bishops, and 440 theologians present charged Hus with lying or blaspheming in this statement.
There is also circumstantial evidence difficult to explain if there was never a female Pope. One example is the so-called chair exam, part of the medieval papal consecration ceremony for almost six hundred years. Each newly elected Pope after Joan sat on the sella stercoraria (literally, "dung seat"), pierced in the middle like a toilet, where his genitals were examined to give proof of his manhood. Afterward the examiner solemnly informed the gathered people, "Mas nobis nominus est" -- "Our nominee is a man." Only then was the Pope handed the keys of St. Peter. This ceremony continued until the sixteenth century.
Another interesting piece of circumstantial evidence is the "shunned street." The Patriarchium, the Pope?s residence and episcopal cathedral (now St. John Lateran) is located on the opposite side of Rome from St. Peter?s Basilica; papal processions therefore frequently traveled between them. A quick perusal of any map of Rome will show that the Via Sacra (now the Via S. Giovanni) is by far the shortest and most direct route between these two locations -- and so in fact it was used for centuries (hence the name Via Sacra, or "sacred road"). This is the street on which Joan reportedly gave birth to her stillborn child. Soon afterward, papal processions deliberately began to turn aside from the Via Sacra.
As for the Church?s second argument, that there was not sufficient time between the papacies of Leo IV and Benedict III for Joan to have reigned -- this too is questionable. The Liber pontificalis is notoriously inaccurate with regard to the times of papal accessions and deaths; many of the dates cited are known to be wholly invented. Given the strong motivation of a contemporary chronicler to conceal Joan?s papacy, it would be no great surprise if the date of Leo?s death was moved forward from 853 to 855 -- through the time of Joan?s reported two-year reign -- in order to make it appear that Pope Leo was immediately succeeded by Pope Benedict III.

Historical Suppression of Facts?

Those are the basic historical facts -- but what is historical "fact?" What is legend and myth? Where does fact end and fiction begin? And who assembles and reports the facts upon which the history is assembled and labels them as truth? Can the facts of history be rewritten, depending upon who is recording them? Modern history is full of examples of stories emphasized (or suppressed) by the writers of that history -- Russia (before, during and after various revolutionary phases) and Japan/Germany (in relation to World War II). Traditional American history, absent stories of women and people of color, is being supplemented. The victors in any conflict are the ones who write the final story -- one that usually places them in the most favorable light. Consider: how much more potentially convoluted are stories with a thousand years between us and their source? The history of the Roman Catholic Church and the papacy was written by the men within the institution itself. It is fascinating, then, to propose that it be re-examined. What should be done with the multiple legends of a female pope commonly called Joan?

Mice Created With Human Brain Cells

Add another creation to the strange scientific menagerie where animal species are being mixed together in ever more exotic combinations. Scientists announced Monday that they had created mice with small amounts of human brain cells in an effort to make realistic models of neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease.
Led by Fred Gage of the Salk Institute in San Diego, the researchers created the mice by injecting about 100,000 human embryonic stem cells per mouse into the brains of 14-day-old rodent embryos.
Those mice were each born with about 0.1 percent of human cells in each of their heads, a trace amount that doesn't remotely come close to "humanizing" the rodents.
"This illustrate that injecting human stem cells into mouse brains doesn't restructure the brain," Gage said.
Still, the work adds to the growing ethical concerns of mixing human and animal cells when it comes to stem cell and cloning research. After all, mice are 97.5 percent genetically identical to humans.
"The worry is if you humanize them too much you cross certain boundaries," said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Medical Center for Biomedical Ethics. "But I don't think this research comes even close to that."
Researchers are nevertheless beginning to bump up against what bioethicists call the "yuck factor."
Three top cloning researchers, for instance, have applied for a patent that contemplates fusing a complete set of human DNA into animal eggs in order to manufacturer human embryonic stem cells.
One of the patent applicants, Jose Cibelli, first attempted such an experiment in 1998 when he fused cells from his cheek into cow eggs.
"The idea is to hijack the machinery of the egg," said Cibelli, whose current work at Michigan State University does not involve human material because that would violate state law.
Researchers argue that co-mingling human and animal tissue is vital to ensuring that experimental drugs and new tissue replacement therapies are safe for people.
Others have performed similar experiments with rabbit and chicken eggs while University of California-Irvine researchers have reported making paralyzed rodents walk after injecting them with human nerve cells.
Doctors have transplanted pig valves into human hearts for years, and scientists have injected human cells into lab animals for even longer. But the brain poses an additional level of concern because some envision nightmare scenarios in which a human mind might be trapped in an animal head.
"Human diseases, such as Parkinson's disease, might be amenable to stem cell therapy, and it is conceivable, although unlikely, that an animal's cognitive abilities could also be affected by such therapy," a report issued in April by the influential National Academies of Science that sought to draw some ethical research boundaries.
So the report recommended that such work be allowed, but with strict ethical guidelines established.
"Protocols should be reviewed to ensure that they take into account those sorts of possibilities and that they include ethically sensitive plans to manage them if they arise," the report concluded.
At the same time, the report did endorse research that co-mingles human and animal tissue as vital to ensuring that experimental drugs and new tissue replacement therapies are safe for people.
Gage said the work published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is another step in overcoming one of the biggest technical hurdles confronting stem cell researchers: when exactly to inject the cells into patients.
The results suggest that human embryonic stem cells, once injected into people, will mature into the cells that surround them. No known human has ever received an injection of embryonic stem cells because so little is known about how those cells will mature once inside the body.
For now, Gage said his work is more geared toward understanding disease than to finding a cure.
"It's a way for us to begin to tease out the way these diseases develop," Gage said.
Human embryonic stem cells are created in the first days after conception and give rise to all the organs and tissues in the human body. Scientists hope they can someday use stem cells to replace diseased tissue. But many social conservatives, including President Bush, oppose the work because embryos are destroyed during research.
Stem cell researchers argue that mixing human and animal cells is the only way to advance the field because it's far too risky to experiment on people; so little is known about stem cells.
"The experiments have to be done, which does mean human cells into non-human cells," said Dr. Evan Snyder, a stem cell researcher at the Burnham Institute in San Diego. "You don't work out the issues on your child or your grandmother. You want to work this out in an animal first."
Snyder is injecting human embryonic stem cells into monkeys and is convinced that there's little danger.
"It's true that there is a huge amount of similarity, but the difference are huge," Snyder said. "You will never ever have a little human trapped inside a mouse or monkey's body."

Gang Founder Claimed Innocence Until the End

Blue Rage

Stanley Tookie Williams maintained his innocence right up until his death, even when an admission of guilt may have spared him execution.
Even after the courts and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected a flurry of Williams' last-ditch appeals before his execution early Tuesday, his supporters vowed to prove his innocence.
Williams, the Crips gang co-founder whose case stirred a national debate about capital punishment versus the possibility of redemption, was executed Tuesday morning for killing four people in 1979.
Williams, 51, died at 12:35 a.m. Officials at San Quentin State Prison seemed to have trouble injecting the lethal mixture into his muscular arm. As they struggled to find a vein, Williams looked up repeatedly and appeared frustrated, shaking his head at supporters and other witnesses.
"You doing that right?" it sounded as if he asked one of the men with a needle.
After he was declared dead, his supporters shouted in unison: "The state of California just killed an innocent man," as they walked out of the chamber.
Lora Owens, stepmother of one of the four people Williams was convicted of killing witnessed the execution. "I believe it was a just punishment long overdue," she told ABC's "Good Morning America."
Williams' case became one of the nation's biggest death-row cause celebres in decades, with Hollywood stars and capital punishment foes arguing that Williams' sentence should be commuted to life in prison because he had made amends by writing children's books about the dangers of gangs and violence.
His execution also drew fierce criticism in Europe, where politicians in Schwarzenegger's native Austria called for his name to be removed from a sports stadium in his hometown.
"Schwarzenegger has a lot of muscles, but apparently not much heart," said Julien Dray, spokesman for the Socialist Party in France, where the death penalty was abolished in 1981.
Williams became the 12th person executed in California since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977.
In the days leading up to the execution, state and federal courts refused to reopen his case. Monday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger denied Williams' request for clemency, suggesting that his supposed change of heart was not genuine because he had not shown any real remorse for the killings committed by the Crips.
"Is Williams' redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise?" Schwarzenegger wrote. "Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption."
Schwarzenegger said the evidence of Williams' guilt was "strong and compelling." Witnesses at Williams' trial said he boasted about the killings, saying: "You should have heard the way he sounded when I shot him."
Williams was condemned in 1981 for gunning down convenience store clerk Albert Owens, 26, at a 7-Eleven in Whittier and killing Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and the couple's daughter Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at the Los Angeles motel they owned. Williams claimed he was innocent.
Williams was led into the death chamber at midnight, shackled and handcuffed. He declined to give a formal final statement.
He seemed frustrated by the length of time it took officials to insert the intravenous lines in his arms. He repeatedly looked up, shaking his head at supporters, reporters and other witnesses whom officials did not identify.
In all, it took nearly a half-hour to prepare Williams for execution. It took much less time to die; he appeared to stop breathing just moments after a prison official read the death warrant and said, "The execution shall now proceed."
Williams was described as "complacent, quiet and thoughtful," by Corrections Department spokeswoman Terry Thornton in the hours before the execution. He declined to have a last meal as he waited in the holding cell, drinking milk instead. Prison officials said he spent his last hours reading mail, watching television and visiting with his lawyers and friends.
After watching her longtime friend die, Barbara Becnel told the crowd of hundreds gathered outside prison gates that she would prove Williams' innocence and that Schwarzenegger was a "cold-blooded murderer."
She said Williams "was brave and strong and he was everything we believed him to be."
Singer Joan Baez, M A S H actor Mike Farrell and the Rev. Jesse Jackson were among the celebrities who protested the execution.
"Tonight is planned, efficient, calculated, antiseptic, cold-blooded murder and I think everyone who is here is here to try to enlist the morality and soul of this country," said Baez, who sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" on a small plywood stage set up just outside the gates.
A contingent of 40 people who had walked the approximately 25 miles from San Francisco held signs calling for an end to "state-sponsored murder." But others, including Debbie Lynch, 52, of Milpitas, said they wanted to honor the victims.
"If he admitted to it, the governor might have had a reason to spare his life," Lynch said.
Among the celebrities who took up Williams' cause were Jamie Foxx, who played the gang leader in a cable movie about Williams; rapper Snoop Dogg, himself a former Crip; Sister Helen Prejean, the nun depicted in "Dead Man Walking"; and Bianca Jagger. During Williams' 24 years on death row, a Swiss legislator, college professors and others nominated him for the Nobel Prizes in peace and literature.
Williams founded the Crips gang with a friend in 1971 and managed stay out of trouble for years despite his claims that he was a drug-fueled thug who robbed, beat and shot at people.
Authorities say the gang is responsible for hundreds of deaths, many of them in battles with the rival Bloods for turf and control of the drug trade.
Whatever luck Williams found on the streets avoiding the law ended in 1979 after four people were killed in a pair of armed robberies that were connected to him and his pump-action shotgun.
Williams never wavered from his claim of innocence and said he refused to confess to crimes he did not commit, even if doing so would save his life. He said he redeemed himself while in prison and apologized for starting the Crips.
"There is no part of me that existed then that exists now," Williams said recently during several hours of interviews with The Associated Press. He said that while he wanted to live and continue his work with children, he was prepared to die.
"I haven't had a lot of joy in my life. But in here," he says, pointing to his heart, "I'm happy. I am peaceful in here. I am joyful in here."

Stanley Tookie Williams Finally Executed But Debate Rages

The Crips

The Real Crips

The Beginning

In the spring of 1971, when Tookie was 17, he was in a very different situation. He was a high school student from South Central Los Angeles. He had a fearsome reputation as a fighter and as a "general" of South Central's west side. And, around that time, Tookie, along with Raymond Lee Washington, created what would one day be a super-gang, the Crips. Back in the day when Tookie and Raymond founded the Crips, many of the young people of South Central Los Angeles were involved with small gangs. Those gang members roamed South Central taking property from anyone who feared them, including women and children. To protect the community, Tookie and Raymond organized the Crips.

Growth

By 1979, the Crips had grown from a small Los Angeles gang to an organization with membership spread across the State of California. By this time, Crips had also become just like the gang members they had once sought to protect themselves from -- Crips had become gangbangers who terrorized their own neighborhoods.
Soon the Crips lost both their leaders: in 1979, Raymond was murdered by a rival gang member, and, that same year, Tookie was arrested. He was charged with murdering four people. In 1981, Tookie was convicted of those crimes and placed on death row.

Life in Prison

In 1987, Tookie began what became a 6 1/2-year stay in solitary confinement. After two years there, Tookie began to look at himself. He focused on the choices he had made in his life and then committed himself to make a drastic change. The long, difficult process he undertook to rebuild his character put him in touch with his true spirit, his own humanity. Only then could Tookie finally begin to care about the many children, mothers, fathers and other family members of this country hurt by the Crips legacy and by its explosive growth. The gang is now in 42 states and on at least one other continent: South Africa. Youngsters in Soweto and other South African cities have formed the Crips copycat gangs.

Tookie Today (scheduled to die by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison on 12/13/05) 3 days before this post.

Tookie greatly regrets the violent history of the Crips -- particularly how so many young black men have hurt each other -- and he wants to do what he can to stop it. The Tookie Speaks Out Against Gang Violence book series for elementary-school-age children is the first fruit of his longing to prevent young people of every color from becoming gangbangers, from ending up in prison, crippled by bullets, or killed.
Tookie is determined to make amends for having been a co-founder of the Crips. He intends to try in every way he can to guide those youngsters who have imitated him away from the road that led him to death row where he faces State execution. "Don't join a gang," he tells children in his books, writing from his San Quentin cell. "You won't find what you're looking for. All you will find is trouble, pain and sadness. I know. I did."