What the Catholic Church Could Learn from “Conclave”
The papal-election thriller Conclave has been out a little more than a month, and while its earnings have not exactly set the world on fire, it has continued to show traction in the popular imagination. Recently the New York Times did a fun feature on the number of Conclave-related memes that have pope-d up (yes, I did that, you’re welcome).
I had resisted seeing the film. As I’ve written here before, Catholic films, particularly those concerning priests, have a tendency toward unintentional kitsch that can be hard to take when you’ve actually been one. The only priests I’ve ever met who wear the black dresses-of-many-buttons are either working in Rome, want to be working in Rome, or work for priests who want to be working in Rome. And yet God help me if almost every priest on screen ends up cinched up in one of them, whether they live in Italy or rural Idaho.
Priests in films also break the confidential seal of the confessional like it’s advice on the back of a bubblegum wrapper rather than a rule so serious that ignoring it can get you thrown out of the church. (The plot of Conclave turns at one point on such a break, and for as pious and good as he otherwise seems, Ralph Fiennes’s Cardinal Thomas Lawrence does the deed without blinking an eye.) And as a whole, the Hollywood-styled clergy almost never have the ring of truth about them. They’re either too saintly or too Snidely Whiplash. The best priests I have known are good in ways that are not cinematic; the worst are far more clever than they’re shown onscreen.
(Last year, I saw the revival of Doubt with a good friend. At the end, she praised Liev Schreiber’s performance. “I have no idea whether he did it.” Without even thinking, I said, “They always did it.” And though that’s not perfectly true, in my experience it’s pretty darn close.)
But after weeks of hearing about Conclave, I gave in. I was immediately shocked by the audience—though I went mid-afternoon on a Friday, the theater was pretty full. Not only that, they were invested in this movie. There was gasps, chuckles, and applause at all the right moments.
As you might imagine from a Hollywood movie about the papacy, it has its share of speeches about the church. But screenwriter Peter Straughan, working from the Robert Harris novel, does an elegant job of presenting them crisply and succinctly. “If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith,” Cardinal Lawrence says off the cuff in the opening homily of the conclave. “Let us pray for a pope who doubts. Let us pray for pope who sins and asks for forgiveness and who carries on.”
Likewise, after a bombing attack in Rome leaves some in the conclave insisting the church needs to return to its old ways, the mild-mannered Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz) says, “The church is not tradition. The church is not the past. The church is what we do next.”
I was pleasantly surprised to find the film does so many things right. The cardinals were well drawn, starting with Fiennes’s Cardinal Lawrence. From what he wore—finally, a priest who wears clerical shirts, and also occasionally normal-person clothes—to the way he went about dealing with his fellow cardinals and organizing the conclave, he looked and felt like most priests I know. (As I write this, I find myself realizing that part of the believability of his performance comes from his overall weariness. I know many joyful priests, but I don’t know many that aren’t also at some level really, really tired.)
Most of his fellow cardinals occupy rather trope-y roles, but do them well: There is the American liberal, Cardinal Tucci (played with verve by Stanley Tucci); the conservative Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellito), who insists we’re at war with Islam and bemoans the absence of Latin as a shared language; and the corrupt American, Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow), who is secretly paying off and blackmailing various cardinals so he can become pope. The silliness of the idea that two of the main contenders for pope would be Americans goes unremarked.
There’s also an African cardinal, Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), who seems wonderful but has a secret child and is apparently deeply homophobic; a protective mother superior, Sister Agnes (Isabella Rosellini), whose sisters are taking care of the cardinals during the conclave; and finally, there’s the saint, Cardinal Benitez, who appears on the scene at the beginning of the film as a total unknown, having been appointed Archbishop of Kabul in secret by the prior pope, and proceeds with immense humility and wisdom.
You can probably guess where the film is going to end up, though it takes a delicious number of twists and turns to get there, and in their own way pretty much everyone gets what they have coming to them. One of the strongest elements of the film, in fact, is the degree to which it presents a realistic, demythologized vision of a conclave. Prayer and the Spirit are important here, and play essential roles in the decision-making process. There’s a powerful moment of the wind blowing into the conclave chamber, reminding the cardinals of whose work they’re about.
But massive egos, ambition, secrets, and corruption all play a role in the process, too, including the secrets the cardinals keep from themselves. As Cardinal Lawrence weaves his way through the information he’s learning, uncovering things that the cardinals need to know, he’s repeatedly challenged about whether or not he isn’t acting out of some personal ambition. In the end, I’m not sure he knows. The answer is really left up to us.
Before too long the real church will be having a new conclave of its own, its cardinals wrestling with similar questions together about what it is to be church today. And as much as the film Conclave is just a movie, I think the cardinals involved would be well served to take onboard the film’s portrait of the church and themselves. Where is their own ego in their discernment? Where is their ambition in motion? What secrets are they perhaps keeping from themselves? No matter to what degree they are people of prayer and faith, these elements remain. They’re part of our humanity.
I think the film falls down slightly in having a man waiting in the wings who is clearly Jesus on a good day, undeniably human—in a way more fully human than you and me (see the film, you’ll understand)—and also undeniably holy. And yet, maybe that seeming bit of fantasy has a truth to it, as well. Perhaps the cardinals at conclave should imagine themselves like Elijah on the mountain waiting for the Lord to pass by. And God comes not in the loudest voices, the broadest shoulders, the finest garments, the deepest pockets, the highest profiles, the fiercest arguments, but in a gentle whisper.
