What the Conclave longs for | Dan Hitchens

TThe Pope is dead. Sede freely. From the imaginary corners of the round earth, the 120 cardinal electors, the progressives and the conservatives, the extroverts and the silent, the Latin Americans and the Orientals, the bearded and the clean-shaven, come to elect a successor behind the walls of the Vatican. A robust African conservative (Lucian Msamati) and a choleric Italian traditionalist (Sergio Castellitto) are the leading candidates, but a reformist faction is making plans in the shadows. Rumors and hostilities swirl in the air. A mysterious newcomer (Carlos Diehz) – a cardinal secretly appointed by the late Pope – brings an eerie, otherworldly touch to the gathering. And above all stands the dean of the College of Cardinals, the efficient but tormented Englishman Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes).

conclaveThe premise of The Vatican has the advantage of a clear dramatic structure, a sense of high stakes, and a perfect setting for shenanigans – the Vatican is the largest and draughtiest country house in the world. It has the disadvantage that a conclave is essentially a discussion board, and that the modern cardinal – with some notable exceptions – tends to be a figure who is neither truly heroic nor truly villainous.

In short, you’d give the setup a solid B-minus, like virtually everything in the film. The actors do an occasionally wooden but mostly respectable job (although when we first see Stanley Tucci as the American progressive Cardinal Bellini, he looks very much like he came off the set). The devil wears Prada and just realized his mistake). The script is uninspired (“You’re a manager,” Lawrence says aloud to himself. “Get it done!”) without being actively offensive. The anti-Catholic stuff Is actively offensive, but in a fairly mundane way by today’s standards. The plot is predictable, the big twist is idiotic but relatively well constructed, the reflection of the Vatican’s current politics is noticeable but lacks insight. Sit back, relax and let things take effect. This way you won’t miss anything important when your attention wanders.

The theology is, of course, murky. “There is one sin that I fear more than any other,” Cardinal Lawrence announces to his companions: “certainty.” He continues: “If there were only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith. “

It is wise that Fiennes delivers this monologue because it so accurately reflects the common sense of the ordinary English liberal – thoughtful, reserved, eloquent, open-minded, generous and 100 percent wrong. As John Henry Newman noted, faith is believing something because God said so; and while you should have a certain level of skepticism about the statements made by, for example Washington Postit is entirely reasonable to have certainty about what God has revealed. To quote a great philosopher, translated by a great poet: “Truth itself speaks true, or nothing is true.”

As for certainty being the enemy of “mystery”: Well, such mind-boggling mathematical truths as Euler’s identity or Euclid’s theorem are as certain as anything, but also deeply mysterious. And in general, mysterious things have some certainty, structure, and even predictability: the changing of the seasons, the rings of a tree, a wedding ceremony, a cello concert.

Or the Sistine Chapel, which was lovingly photographed here both in close-up and in its impressive entirety. This is the central tension in conclave. His script is about how terrible certainty is and how much we should doubt ourselves and our clear categories. However, the film’s imagery could have been lifted from a shamelessly triumphalist documentary film entitled “…” Catholicism: The World’s Greatest Story. Cardinals scurry between columns meant to stand for millennia. Marble shines. Painted putti look down. No thread about the cardinals’ mozzettas or the nuns’ habits is out of place.

The film loves Latin, Gregorian chants and church leaders dressed in liturgical vestments that require multiple altar boys to carry them. It loves Renaissance domes, Michelangelo’s ceilings and five-meter-high slamming doors. It loves all the traditions surrounding the conclave, such as the removal of the fisherman’s ring and the wax stamp on the ribbon that closes the papal apartment.

And is it just me, or is there a deeper longing here? The perfectly pressed linen that the Cardinals wear. The exact order of their desks in the conclave, 120 immaculately symmetrical arrangements of books and paper. At Casa Santa Marta, the nuns set the tables for dinner as synchronously as an Olympic swimming team. This precision in detail, this feeling that you can’t pay enough attention, that even the smallest physical movements have to be done this way and no other. . .

Compared to most Catholics of my generation, I have the liturgical sensitivity of a hamster. But as I watched the film and tried to imagine what it was pining for with its dim lights and mumbled dialogue, Mass came to mind. And not the kind that starts with “Good morning everyone.”

Dan Hitchens is a senior editor at First things.