Ouch! Female Pope?

By Reg Green

After I told Iconoclast readers (April 28) that when a Vatican guide put a papal mitre on the head of my infant daughter Eleanor, I had a vision of a new line of popes: American, female and first-grade, a reader hiding behind the peculiar alias of Webster Smogpule sternly wondered at my ignorance in not knowing that a pope couldn’t be female. (First grade, apparently, is acceptable to the Smogpules.)  Now the conclave has just made one of the other  whimsies come true, maybe he shouldn’t be too sure. The next time I have cocktails with the Pope I’ll ask him to consider it.