ABC Blazes a Trail, Whooppee

A friend sends a press release from the Catholic League about ABC's Primetime show, airing tonight, titled "On the Trail of Pope Joan." As the release points out, for years the network has offered specials on Jesus' divinity and resurrection as open questions. That is (this is me, not the Catholic League) reasonable enough for a network trying to speak to every kind of viewer, though I suspect the way the network presented the open question suggested one (the skeptical) answer or at least that agnosticism was the wisest course.

At least ABC's previous specials dealt with someone of whom we know something, whatever one thinks of him. Now they have presented, as if it were a serious subject, an old and not terribly plausible myth, lately become a feminist fantasy. "Those old misogynists had a female pope, who even had a baby in a procession! The joke's on them! Har har har." And a nice racy jolt for the religious but jaded. Story