When I texted a Roman Catholic friend this month to say that a friend had been elected an Anglican bishop, she responded, “Where do you know him (or her…just kidding) from?” Regarding the wider Anglican world such a question is not merely a good-natured barb, but a reasonable inquiry given the state of the Anglican Communion. Every Christian tradition has set itself up in some way to be the punchline of a joke, the subject of satire, or even an object of contempt. Robert Harris’s 2016 novel Conclave and the subsequent movie adaption show the Roman Catholic Church is no exception.
The story opens with the death of a fictitious Francis-like pope and follows the various machinations of the cardinal electors during which the next pope will be selected. The novel met with a tepid critical response, and in some quarters of Roman Catholicism, outright contempt. Ahead of the movie adaptation’s release on October 25, I read the book and then was able to attend an advance screening. As the cliché goes, the book is much better than the movie.
I read negative reviews, but never encountered a spoiler. I knew that there had to be some sort of twist because as I read because I was struck by how fairly the characters, almost all senior Roman Catholic officials, are portrayed. It isn’t a thinly veiled screed against traditionalist religion as many popular level works are. The book is narrated by the Dean of the College of Cardinals in first person limited, so the reader peers into the mind of this cardinal. I assumed at any moment his interior thought life would prove him to be a hypocrite. But the dean’s internal struggles as written by Harris are sincere, and his loyalty to the Roman Church is undaunted. The main character is a good cardinal and a good priest. Sincere, devoted to discerning the good, and committed to serving God above all else.
And it isn’t just the Dean that’s portrayed with some sympathy—the dialogue that explains some of the tensions within the modern church is presented fairly. The words in the mouths of the traditionalists, the progressives, and every person in between articulate positions for and against women in ministry, same sex marriage, and a return to the Latin Rite. Of course, there is scandal and intrigue among the cardinals; some have worldly ambitions, too. But it is all surprisingly fair in its presentation, and an interesting read. At least until the last ten lazy pages when Harris unnecessarily wades into cultural and theological controversies dealing with gender and sexuality. I was caught off guard not because Harris left a bread-crumb trail in the book obvious only in hindsight but because the forced ending was such obvious pandering.
The movie adaptation is much less subtle. Theological and ecclesial factions are explicitly identified in dialogue, and the characters who embody those factions are caricatures and do not articulate the various positions with any precision. And the gender and sexuality twist at the end is even less nuanced than the book.
The author and filmmaker have obviously intended to provide commentary about gender and sexuality in the Roman Catholic Church. But the book, and particularly the movie, do so in a way that primarily attracts the attention of those opposed to Christianity. Regarding gender and sexuality debates, Harris and the film producers especially are much more inflammatory than provocative.
There are, however, at least some issues covered with nuance, albeit perhaps unintentionally. The Dean of College of Cardinals had previously asked to leave Rome, but the request was denied by the late Pope on the basis that some are called to shepherd and others to manage the farm. The line has plot significance because the Dean is clearly wounded by the suggestion that he is one of the managers, meaning one more concerned with the Catholic Church’s earthly functions than its spiritual work.
The Roman Church is an institution at once devoted to spirituality, but also civic and social roles. It is spiritual as it administers the sacraments, but it is civic when the Knights of Columbus raise money towards sports equipment for disadvantaged kids. Of course, raising money for disadvantaged kids also has a spiritual dimension.
Note that the distinction between spiritual and civic is not identical to the separation between sacred and secular. Houses of worship must have contracts for quotidian affairs like trash collection, though seemingly devoid of the sacral. Catholics believe that the Roman Church is guided and protected by the Holy Spirit, who cares little for which company handles the refuse but very much about who is elected pope and how the faithful engage moral issues in the world.
The question of where this dividing line falls is what defines the work of the shepherds and the managers. Writing as a non-Catholic Christian, I recognize and appreciate this tension. Given the way that Catholics understand their Church they should approach this question with fear and trembling—the merely civic cannot be sacralized and the spiritual cannot be reduced to merely civic significance. The latter pitfall describes the social gospel, which liberal Protestantism gave itself up to a century ago.
This brings into sharp focus the shepherds versus managers distinction. Whose hand is on the rudder when the Church is called upon to act as a social or civic institution? Is it the shepherd’s hand that is bound by dogma, or the managers hand that must consider more pragmatic issues? The answers to these questions are themselves fraught and fertile ground for controversy and conflict.
The global presence of the Roman Church in all its glory and its shame is often underestimated by non-Catholic Christians and others. It is the only representative of Christianity in some parts of the world. And the role that St. Pope John Paul II played in the fall of communism is unmatched. But was he acting as a shepherd opposing the moral evil of communism, or as a manager considering the existential threat that global communism presented and presents to Western civilization? Was the Church flexing spiritual muscle in the face of the moral vacuum of state-sponsored atheism or was it acting as civic institution with an office at the United Nations and political representatives in every region of the world?
Pope Benedict XVI, while still Cardinal Ratzinger, described the Holy Spirit’s role in the life of the Roman Church as providing “assurance…that the things cannot be totally ruined.” And many Catholics would point to the perseverance of the Church as proof of its divine guidance. As Hilaire Belloc remarked: [I]f the Catholic Church had not been divinely protected, she would have gone down to destruction long ago, for the clergy themselves, in their incompetence and immorality, would have destroyed her.” Despite the at-times troubled history of Catholicism, today it is undoubtedly in everyone’s best interest that steady, wise, and moral leaders lead the Roman Church, whether primarily shepherds or managers. And Robert Harris’s story, despite its biased ambitions on the page and on the screen, does at least remind us of that point.