SPOILER ALERT: CONCLAVE SPOILERS AHEAD!
If the Catholic tradition proposes countless examples of beautiful art to draw humans closer to the ground of beauty, then it is regrettable that so many discussions of art in Catholics circles seem to end in ugly rancor. The Culture Wars that plague U.S. culture not only divide Catholics, but also crowd out possibilities for offering something better than conflict.
The movie Conclave has been praised for many of its features, particularly the set and the cast, garnering it a great number of awards nominations. As in so many other areas, however, Catholics have been divided in their appreciation of the film.
Some Catholics have praised it, for instance, for its “compelling and ecclesial call for a renewed spiritual stewardship characterized by humility, meekness and, curiously, doubt.” Others have criticized it as “anti-Catholic,” most notably Bishop Robert Barron, who described it as “a film about the Catholic Church that could have been written by the editorial board of the New York Times.” In the midst of all of this, Conclave director Edward Berger had this to say:
In the end, if there were controversy, I never think it’s bad . . . I invite that. I love that. We’ve lost the ability to argue with each other without fighting each other. And if everyone has a different opinion and a different feeling, that’s a good thing. If I disagree with you, I might learn something from you . . . and suddenly go, “Ah, OK, never thought about it that way. Thank you for teaching me.”
In the spirit of Berger’s invitation, I wish in this essay to move beyond this impasse among Catholics about how to interpret the film. It is not surprising that Catholics who disagree on little else will not find common ground on this film, especially when the film repeatedly touches upon one of the greatest controversies within the Church since the Second Vatican Council: the relationship between “Church and world.” But that disagreement should not discourage us, but rather encourage us to recover the ability to disagree fruitfully.
To preview my argument: I believe that Catholics can disagree fruitfully about Conclave because they have something to learn from each other. The problem with the movie is not that it is anti-Catholic, but that it is pro-Catholic in the most immanentist way. In other words, the opportunity it affords is to go deeper into the nature of the Church.
To put this another way, the movie sees something very good in the Church, but ends up betraying what is best about it: the hope for something beyond sin and conflict. It sees in the Church the possible champion of an earthly ideology, a place where a kind of political vision can triumph. This is bad theology. It mistakes the Church’s social and political implications for a wholly political and social nature.
It is also bad politics. It valorizes a tired political agenda, as though if the right people could just be in charge, things would work out. Finally, and I can only gesture to this, the movie points to the importance of truly Catholic art, an imagination for a better, more hopeful, and ultimately true image of reality. Just as the movie as art embodies a vision of humanity as conflictual and mired in fear and powerlessness, so Christian art can present the Gospel as a source of light and life for the world.
A Conclave for Caesar
Perhaps the most obvious aspect of the movie is also the best place to start. While the movie ostensibly centers around the election of a pope by the College of Cardinals, it ultimately asks the viewers of the movie to elect a particular political program. The story is simple enough: the pope has died, and the cardinal-electors gather to elect a new one. The scenery and backdrops are stunning, the actors are excellent, and given the subject there is plenty of engrossing high drama, especially surrounding the cardinal eventually elected pope. (Plenty has already been written about that.)
More broadly, the drama of the film arises from the suspense of who will be the next pope, and the machinations among the factions to secure the pope most amenable to their interests. Stanley Tucci as Cardinal Bellini, for example, initially desires to become pope, but soon shifts his focus to preventing other cardinals from being elected. Then there is the situation of the ambitious Cardinal Tremblay, played by John Lithgow, and Cardinal Adeyemi, played by Lucian Msamati, whose scandals deny them the white zucchetto just when it seemed to be within their grasp. (The depiction of Cardinal Adeyemi deserves its own treatment, as it reflects broader Western prejudices against Black Africans that have recently become socially acceptable again in many Catholic circles.)
For an American viewer, this all feels at once exotic and familiar. The exalted settings and mysterious rituals allow the viewer to leave their cares behind as they enter into a world far removed from their own. And yet the political horse-trading is all too reminiscent of a political society that is deeply dysfunctional, or better yet, sub-functional. A positive review of the film inadvertently makes this point:
Potential candidates span the political gamut: Bellini (Stanley Tucci) is the progressive contingent's champion, while Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) represents the conservatives and, if elected, could undo work done by past popes. There’s also the Canadian prelate, Tremblay (John Lithgow), who is more moderate, as well as Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), who could be the first Nigerian pope—but his hardline stance against homosexuality complicates his odds. The true wild card is Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), the archbishop of Kabul, whose surprising last-minute arrival complicates the left-right divide.
Is this a movie about the Church, or about U.S. politics? In a 2016 interview, the author of the book on which the movie is based, Robert Harris, said “I don’t think this book could have been written by a complete atheist.” He insisted that “the whole point of the novel is that there is a difference between the Church and the secular world”:
A conclave is not to be confused with what might go on in a secular organization. There are, of course, rules to a conclave, but they govern a spiritual reality. To see the workings of the conclave from the outside would be a terrible mistake, but fiction allows you to get an inside view.
Therein lies a key distinction: the conclave, like every aspect of the Church’s life, has a human element. But it is not reducible to the human element. Even if one has a rather low pneumatology of the selection of popes, what is at stake is clearly more than human politics. And yet, one would not easily find that message in the film.
The Post-Constantinian Church
One can see why some would pan the movie as “anti-Catholic.” The problem is not showing the human side of the Church. The problem is reducing it to the human side. For that reason, many have criticized the film for its political reading of the Church. For Bishop Barron, the film “checks practically every woke box,” including “the progressive buzz words of diversity, inclusion, [and] indifference to doctrine.” Ben Shapiro made similar claims, decrying that the movie is about “how the traditional Catholic Church is evil and how the Church needs to become a progressive bastion.”
Barron and Shapiro are worried about the reduction of Catholicism to a civil religion for a particular political program. That concern is legitimate enough, so far as it goes. But perhaps that worry should be framed in more general terms: the Church is not a civil religion at all. It does not exist to serve any political program. Were the movie a celebration of politically conservative clichés, the danger would be just as real. (Here of course Barron’s intellectual mentor de Lubac is indispensable.)
The controversy around the movie is a teachable moment: not simply to reject a certain vision of politics, but to proclaim a broader vision of the Church as good news. This can be done joyfully, and indeed must be if it is to embody and live out what it calls others to be and do. Such criticisms, moreover, fall short of helpful when they fail to ask why the Church should so often be the subject of film and art. The Church, her sacraments and rites, her hierarchy, her sense of purpose: all of this makes her deeply fascinating to all kinds of people, including filmmakers. For that, we Catholics can and should be grateful. And we should ask: why?
A Tale of Two Churches
In an interview with Berger and two of the leading actors of the movie, Ralph Fiennes and Isabella Rossellini, some of the presuppositions of the film are illustrated in revealing ways. All three, for instance, emphasize the “human” dimension of the drama.
Berger notes that a moment between two cardinals “just felt very human; what was shared between those two in that moment couldn’t be expressed through words.” He also describes the challenge of the drama as “trying to x-ray the human soul and grasp at the ungraspable.” Fiennes, speaking of his leading role, says “He’s wonderfully complex and carries a sense of interior contradiction and struggle. As an actor, the notion that a priest had a crisis with prayer is very interesting. His crises and doubts make him more real and that much more human.” Finally, Rosellini, praising the movie, said, “Whether it’s society or the church, we forget that we’re humans, prone to make mistakes due to our limited understanding. The film reminds you of that.”
For this reason, probably the most important line in the movie is Fiennes’, in an address to the cardinals: “Let us pray that God gives us a pope who doubts.” These are all fine sentiments, and they highlight why many Catholics would love the film. They show a connection between the heart of the faith and fundamental human experiences. They give reasons for non-Christians to care about the Church, offering common ground for dialogue between believers and seekers.
It is no surprise, then, that many Catholics have praised the film. I have already cited the positive NCR review. And America’s John Anderson, despite his critiques calls it “worthy of a film that is magisterial when it isn’t simply being brilliant,” and “cinema of the first rank.”
But a few things can be meant by finding the human in the Church. It could mean “I see something universal and valuable that points beyond itself,” or it could mean “I thought it was just going to be boring God stuff, but actually it is a very cool psychological drama.” The film suggests that the emphasis is on the latter: that the faith is most interesting when it can be explored exclusively as an intra-mundane affair.
This is fascinating because Hollywood has an amply documented fascination with ritual, pomp, secrecy, and, ultimately, power. One wonders if the fascination with doubt and human fragility is not at least occasionally a defense against the fear that behind all of the ritual and liturgy is something, or someone, who can make a claim on us. But no doubt it also masks a guarded hope that the divine really does reach down to touch the human.
To return to Harris’ interview: “I approached the book with a certain trepidation,” he says, “because I recognized that if you didn’t—and I am speaking as an outsider obviously—that if you treated the Vatican simply as if it were ICI or a secular organization, you would miss the point.” There is no such trepidation in the film Conclave.
The interview also sheds light, by the way, on why Rosellini’s portrayal of Sister Agnes is among the strongest performances of the film. In calling upon her experience of attending Catholic schools, she summoned memories of nuns as pillars of quiet strength, of depth and especially vocation beyond the secular categories of who has power and who does not. Rosellini lends Sister Agnes “character of great authority even in her silence” as one of the pivotal roles of the drama. It is that kind of awareness of the link between the human and divine that is missing from so much of the rest of the film.
Art and Truth
Conclave once again seems to present Catholics with a false choice: between intransigent criticism and unreflective praise. But such criticism should not just be a “no” to errors about the Church, but a bold affirmation of the Church. And such praise should be encouraging: how does the human point to the divine?
In light of Berger’s own stated desire to grow, a helpful starting point would be the relationship between art and truth. If art calls for veracity, then an art that fundamentally misunderstands its subject might be interesting, but it falls short of its own vocation. Just so, a film that explores the Church primarily politically or sociologically can be fruitful, because after all the Church is eminently social and its life has profound political consequences.
But accounting firms and stamp collectors’ clubs are also social. For art to say something specific to the Church, it would need to express something of the dance between nature and grace, between human foibles and the Spirit’s mercy. Does that mean that the film would have to be overtly confessional or apologetic? No. But it would have to be open to the beauty of the faith, to the form of something that points beyond it.
Speaking of art, one of the challenges of treating the Church politically is that one can be unreflective about how one’s own politics shape the analysis. How open to the truth is the artist, for instance, who believes that human drama is exclusively political, and that he is in possession of all of the relevant dogmas about politics? The resulting drama not only reduces humans to politics, but politics to morality, and of the most banal kind. Ideology does not invite deep reflection on the deepest needs and desires of human beings, but instead dictates purity of intentions and obedience of actions. So the only challenge left is to become moral: how to live out that ideology.
Indeed, an art unaware of its blind spots is at risk of becoming propaganda, if not decadence. This was the implication of the NYT review’s provocative take on why Hollywood loves Vatican intrigue: “And what the movies especially love are lightly cynical, self-flattering and finally myth-stoking stories that, like this one, evoke the industry itself.” These tendencies toward immanentism and ideology, by the way, are things that Catholic supporters of “secular” arts and artists can and should be thinking about in their praise. But this is not all that can be said.
What Is the Church?
A response to much that goes before this is that Catholics have no right to be defensive about their public image. In a culture whose understanding of the Church is substantially shaped by Spotlight, McCarrick and Law, we should not be surprised to be shown Catholics sinning, often horribly.
Amidst the ugliness of the sins that inflicted these wounds, we should acknowledge that part of what is at stake is the very idea of beauty. Where are the artists that remind us that humans are more than their ugliest, most wicked deeds? Who offers the possibility that real beauty, a form of being that is good and true in the most fundamental way, and not merely a mirage of lies, commercials and propaganda, nevertheless remains within our grasp? The times call not only for public debate and learned discourse, but Catholic art. And not just sociologically Catholic art in the sense that the artist has some connection to the Church, but an art truly arising from the heart of the faith.
In Art and Scholasticism, Jacques Maritain defined “Christian art” as “art which bears within it the character of Christianity . . . the art of redeemed humanity.” As he wrote, “art will be Christian, and will reveal in its beauty the interior reflection of the radiance of grace, only if it overflows from a heart suffused by grace.” As such, it is the most natural thing for the Christian artist to make. But that does not make it easy:
Christianity does not make art easy. It deprives it of many facile means, it bars its course at many places, but in order to raise its level. At the same time that Christianity creates these salutary difficulties, it superelevates art from within, reveals to it a hidden beauty which is more delicious than light, and gives it what the artist has need of most—simplicity, the peace of awe and of love, the innocence which renders matter docile to men and fraternal.
We need an art that shows that the Church is more than the sins of its members, that the Church has a beautiful mission above any ideology. Such an art would go beyond the superficial in its appreciation of the trappings of the Church, showing how so much of Catholic life is not just signs of human weakness but symbols of God’s loving. Ultimately, we need an art that sees our need for Jesus, and how he has chosen to share himself through the Church.
This is clearly not a defensive strategy designed to show up the Church’s reputation. It is not a “strategy” at all. It is simply part of the Way, how some Christians are called to walk with Jesus, spread the Gospel and feed his sheep.
If Catholics find fault with films like Conclave, we should nevertheless be grateful for them, as they remind us of the fascination of wide groups of people with Catholicism. What we do with that hunger is up to us. Indeed, perhaps the ability of Christians to rise to the challenge of an art worthy of such aspirations will be the true mark of our health as a Church, as much as anything else. For, to give Maritain the last word:
If in the midst of the unspeakable catastrophes which the modern world invites, a moment is to come, however brief, of pure Christian springtime—a Palm Sunday for the Church, a brief Hosanna from poor earth to the Son of David—one may expect for these years, together with a lively intellectual and spiritual vigor, the regermination of a truly Christian art, to the delight of men and the angels.
