By Fr Hugh MacKenzie
Ralph Fiennes is a great actor. At least in last autumn’s film, Conclave, in which he stars as the modest Cardinal Lawrence organising the election of a Pope. It’s an absorbing fast-moving thriller in which the intrigue and politicking among the cardinals (incidentally, in real life forbidden by Pope John Paul II’s ordinance) would make Machiavelli blush. Predictably perhaps, we also have the recurrent secular caricature of shallow ‘conservative’ versus open-to-learning ‘progressive’. But, notwithstanding the significant red flags I raise below, there doesn’t seem to be an anti-Catholic agenda at work here. Indeed, the film is based on an engaging novel by the successful historical thriller writer Robert Harris.
It has just won ‘Best Film’ at the BAFTAs down on the South Bank, and has big chances at the upcoming Academy Awards. At this time when we are praying earnestly for the Pope’s health, the next real-life conclave looms. This will give the film another boost. Indeed, it presents the processes accurately and with beautiful cinematography. Already numerous Catholics and non-Catholics have raised the movie in conversation with myself. However from the point of view of Catholic belief, it has caused some confusion with a few subtle but significant flaws. The gripping quality of Ralph Fiennes’ acting and script paradoxically make the film’s failures to ‘get’ Catholicism more insidious. Highlighting them also illustrates the manner in which our slick secular culture can, often unwittingly, ‘evangelise’ us.
Cardinal Lawrence’s initial grief at the death of the previous Pope grabs the viewer. Fiennes’ depiction well draws the audience into empathising with his assiduous guiding of the handing on of the torch of St Peter, or rather the ‘Chair’. The psychological pressure upon him to do this faithfully and wisely builds engrossingly through a series of intrigues and events. You can sense Lawrence’s angst that these might submerge that sacred Chair in human foible and worldly politics – and he himself might even be a cause!
But on three occasions this ‘wisdom’ is actually, from the point of view of Church teaching, unwise. Spoiler alert – though I’ll try to minimise!
Firstly, the film is top and tailed by two speeches to the assembled cardinals. Initially, Cardinal Lawrence offers what he senses is a much-needed warning to guard against personal motivations and party politics in their voting. But he generalises the point in a manner that undermines Catholic teaching.
With a conviction that could only be mustered by a grieving, admirer of the previous occupant of the Chair of Peter and respecter of the Chair itself he carefully argues that 'in the name of unity and tolerance… certainty is a sin'. Faith must involve doubt. Our Lord Jesus showed this, he pleads, in uttering from the Cross 'My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me' (the beginning of Psalm 22). Towards the end of the film, another Cardinal picks up on the theme in an influential speech.
The certainty with which they passionately proclaim the importance of not being certain manifests that contradiction present in our contemporary intolerant relativism. Further, Psalm 22, which is for sure in solidarity with those who doubt or despair, actually predicts Christ’s passion closely and ends in triumph and praise of God. The Catholic Catechism states:
Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie. To be sure, revealed truths can seem obscure to human reason and experience, but ‘the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives.’ (St Thomas Aquinas) ‘Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.’ (St John Henry Newman) [para. 157]
Faith, in short, is a leap in the light, not a leap in the dark!
Secondly, Cardinal Lawrence, under great pressure as ever, gets some needed information from a nun by coaxing her to go to confession to him. Lawrence discreetly shares this information, which is negative about another Cardinal, with that latter Cardinal. This latter dutifully learns a lesson from it but pleads with Lawrence not to share the information publicly. Lawrence confirms that he couldn’t possibly do that given the seal of confession.
This a travesty of the seal which does not allow the priest, under pain of excommunication, to use information gained in confession in any way whatsoever.
Thirdly, one cardinal is revealed as having female internal reproductive organs but male external ones. The previous Pope, we are informed, thought that that wouldn’t stop such a person rising in the priestly hierarchy. Our gallant Cardinal Lawrence, is surprised to hear that. After all, this intersex Cardinal is fundamentally, that is in terms of basic procreative capacities, female, and priests must be male according to scripture, tradition and definitive teaching from the said Chair of Peter (which for Catholicism is of course Christ’s infallible ‘But I say to you’). But Lawrence then quickly agrees that such a cardinal can, after all, be made Pope.
You might not have noticed in this slick drama, but our ‘wise’, top Cardinal, well-acted by Fiennes in a film perhaps destined to be a classic, directly undermines the Catholic faith – three times!
Photo: Mazur/cbcew.org.uk