November 25, 2024
Re: CONCLAVE, Social Media, and "A Temple of the Holy Ghost"
In a May 2023 interview, Helena Puig Larrauri was asked about the phenomenon of online polarization. As a fellow with the nonprofit organization Ashoka, founded in 1980 by American lawyer and “social entrepreneur” Bill Drayton (1943-), Larrauri’s goal is to diminish the dichotomization of voices on social media platforms. This is neither a small nor an easy task. According to Puig Larrauri, digital technologies have tended to stoke “conflict escalation” across the globe, and this intensification stems from their very essence. Not only is social media a vehicle for anonymous trolling and corporate manipulation, but, even worse, the profitability of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter/X increase in conjunction with their facilitation of “affective polarizing content.” As Puig Larrauri explains:
The other [reason why polarization thrives on social media] is the way in which social media algorithms are built: They're looking to serve you up with content that is engaging. And we know that affective polarizing content, that positions groups against each other, is very emotive, and very engaging. As a result, the algorithms serve it up more. So what that means is that social media platforms provide incentives to produce content that is polarizing, because it will be more engaging, which is incentivizing people to produce more content like that, which makes it more engaging, and so on. It's a vicious circle.
Hence, when a debate erupts online, more is involved than a mere socio-political “issue” or “problem.” There is also the underlying reality—namely, that fomenting dissension over a given issue or problem is desirable from the position of the medium as such. Indeed, it may even be the case that what seems to be a divisive, hot-button concern is actually an old and nebulous one.
A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with my wife and several friends, and the topic of the new film Conclave1 came up.
“Are you going to see it?” I asked, assuming that a movie centering on the Catholic Church, helmed by an emerging director, and featuring an award-winning cast would be of interest to present company.
“You don’t know about it?” someone responded.
“Well, I heard that it was controversial, but that’s it.”
“It has…let’s say…a significant plot twist at the end,” I was informed.
“What, does the Pope turn out to be a hitman?” I joked, now wondering if Conclave was a cheap thriller along the lines of The Da Vinci Code (2006).
“Just wait.”
The next day I typed “Conclave” into the search bar on Twitter/X, curious to learn more about the controversy. More specifically, I was trying to decide whether or not I should part with 20 bucks (40 if my wife were interested) in order to see Conclave in the theater. The posts that turned up had a predictable, if not revelatory, ring to them. One Tweeter named Mike Carolla, who is also quite active on Letterboxed, typified the cinephilic reaction, arguing that Conclave ranks among the best releases of 2024:
CONCLAVE is outstanding. I loved this movie. Edward Berger’s mystery thriller may be completely fictional, but there’s something so deeply entertaining and exciting about the events that unravel in this film. Everything is wrapped in scandals and mysteries, leaving you never knowing you can truly be trusted. This story depicts the Vatican as a bunch of grown men who live for the gossip and power they can obtain, which may not be too far off from the truth than we want to admit.
On the other hand, popular Catholic bishop Robert Barron admonished his 300,000+ Twitter followers “to run away from [Conclave} as fast as you can.” Indeed, as Barron sees it, the movie is little more than a “hatchet job” on the Catholic Church:
Just saw “Conclave.” If you are interested in a film about the Catholic Church that could have been written by the editorial board of the New York Times, this is your movie. The hierarchy of the Church is a hotbed of ambition, corruption and desperate egotism, Conservatives are xenophobic extremists and the liberals are self-important schemers. None can escape this irredeemable situation. The only way forward is the embrace of the progressive buzz words of diversity, inclusion, indifference to doctrine, and the ultimate solution is…virtue signaling.
Barron’s review, while scathing, was by no means the harshest online. One Twitter user called Conclave “awful,” to which a respondent added, “I am annoyed I paid money for this woke bullshit.”
Such disparate reactions intrigued me. Clearly Conclave had touched a nerve, but why? Both sides seemed to agree that the film centers on an ecclesiastical scandal, and it wasn’t hard to discern that politics, both within and without the Vatican, feature heavily in the film. But what’s so “shocking” about that? Most contemporary films about Catholicism touch on the conservative-liberal divide in church life and beyond. Conspiracy of Silence (2003) explores the tension between a priesthood struggling with sexual issues and an episcopate hellbent on maintaining the appearance (if not the practice) of clerical celibacy. The Da Vinci Code campily suggests that traditional Catholic teaching is a means of obfuscating the “real truth” about Jesus Christ. The 2015 Best Picture-winner Spotlight brought renewed attention to the sex-abuse crisis in the Archdiocese of Boston, emphasizing (quite rightly in this case) that a façade of righteousness can be used to cover up the most heinous of sins. Of course, as a Catholic, I wish there were more positive movies made about the Church—even really good ones such as Calvary tend to be downcast—but it was hard for me to imagine what made Conclave so different.
Needless to say, then, my wife and I went to go see it. We settled into our seats about 7:45 PM on a Sunday night; the theater was otherwise totally empty. After that twee Nicole Kidman AMC commercial aired—I’ve always thought that Kidman’s line “Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this” serves as an Augustinian warning against filmgoing, but that’s another story—Conclave began in gripping fashion. Moments into the film we learn that the Pope has died unexpectedly. As a result, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes, whose earnest performance is likely to net him an Oscar nomination), is in charge of organizing a papal conclave to elect the next Bishop of Rome. In these early scenes, the cinematic brilliance of German director Edward Berger shines through. As in his excellent 2022 epic film All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues), Berger evinces a great feel for color and place, relishing the formal ecclesiastical setting and its accompanying pageantry.
These first scenes are effectively the apex of Conclave, because once the plot sets in, the film devolves into a potboiler, albeit a well-constructed one. Cardinal Lawrence quickly realizes that the cardinalate is split along political lines. In a manner akin to primary elections in American politics, a handful of papabile candidates duke it out within their respective ecclesial factions. There is more than a little intrigue, as these sincere but flawed clerics strive to garner enough support to ultimately win the papacy. Some fall by the wayside due to scandal, others due to a simple lack of popularity. Yet, when a terrorist attack rocks the city of Rome, the heretofore quarrelsome churchmen put aside their differences and elect the taciturn yet upright Vincent Cardinal Benitez, Archbishop of Kabul, as the next pontiff. A bona fide holy man, who has worked tirelessly among the world’s poor and shown no desire for the Throne of Saint Peter, Benitez has at last ascended to the Church’s supreme office through his own charity and piety.
This may seem like a spoiler, but, in truth, it’s not. From the moment Benitez is introduced, the discerning viewer—particularly one aware of Conclave’s reception and theological proclivities—will have no trouble ascertaining who will eventually emerge as Pope. But here’s the catch: Benitez’s victory is not actually the film’s “twist ending.” Indeed, earlier in the film, Lawrence was informed that Benitez had once dealt with an undisclosed medical problem, though Lawrence was assured that it was no longer an issue. However, in Conclave’s final scenes, the nature of Benitez’s “problem” is revealed: he is “intersex.” More specifically, as we come to learn, Benitez was born with male reproductive organs and, in turn, was raised as a man. Yet, later in life, an emergency procedure revealed that he had also been born with a uterus. This unexpected revelation shocked Benitez, and he strongly pondered getting a hysterectomy. But, in the end, he decided to eschew such an invasive surgery. As one commentator explains, “Cardinal Benitez ultimately opted out of undergoing a hysterectomy because he wanted his body to stay the way God had created it. Benitez didn’t want to alter anything because being intersex was nothing to be ashamed of. If he was born this way, then that was how he was going to continue to live.” The movie ends, then, with Cardinal Lawrence choosing to keep Benitez’s secret, and the latter, accordingly, assumes the papacy.
Of course, herein lies the controversy surrounding Conclave. On the one hand, the Church teaches that only a baptized man can serve as a Catholic priest—an obvious prerequisite to becoming Bishop of Rome. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it (¶ 1577)
“Only a baptized man (vir) validly receives sacred ordination.” The Lord Jesus chose men (ver) to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ’s return. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible.
On the other hand, there has been a concerted move on the Left, whether outside or inside the Church, to amend this and other sexual- and gender-related teachings. To cite but one notable example, in May 2022, the well-known Catholic priest and journalist Fr. James Martin SJ founded Outreach: An LGBTQ Catholic Resource, which presents news stories, opinion columns, and various resources promoting the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ Catholics. Not surprisingly, it has been suggested that Conclave notches a point in favor of Martin’s version of progressive Catholicism: “Conclave is very much about the clash between the traditions of the Catholic Church and the embrace of progressive ideas in a changing world. The fact the new pope is an intersex individual—though for now unknown to the public—represents one of the biggest changes for the Catholic Church and is a major step forward.”
Ostensibly, then, Conclave arranges a made-for-Twitter showdown between defenders of traditional Catholic orthodoxy in one corner and proponents of postmodern liberal orthodoxy in the other. Doubtless the film’s production team and scores of pundits stand to benefit if, in fact, this is the case. Controversy is clickbait. Yet, for a handful of reasons, I’m not convinced that clamor and dissent are the appropriate responses. First, the scenario envisioned by the film is so extraordinary as to be virtually impossible. Consider: that Benitez was born intersex is already exceedingly rare. Not only is the prevalence of intersex “about 0.018%,” but Benitez’s particular circumstance (born with external and internal male sex organs but also with an internal female sex organ) would be even more uncommon, since that “0.018%” refers to a range of intersex possibilities. Still, this improbability is only the tip of the iceberg. Benitez also has to pass through life both unaware of his intersex condition and sufficiently committed to his Catholic faith as to pursue sacerdotal ordination—a calling that is increasingly unusual in this day and age. But that is not all. Benitez also has to be appointed to the cardinalate in pectore. This is a secret installation, known only to the Holy Father, that allows Benitez to arrive at the papal conclave as a “complete unknown.” Hence, while the other cardinals are preoccupied with the qualifications (or lack thereof) of their peers, Benitez is able to avoid scrutiny. The moment that he emerges as a legitimate candidate for the papacy comes in the wake of a terrorist attack in Rome (of which, by the way, there have been exceedingly few over the last forty years). It is in the heat of this crisis that Benitez offers a hackneyed call for “world peace” that, for no discernible reason, produces awe in his fellow cardinals and leads to his election. In a nutshell: Conclave demands the viewer to suspend disbelief. The movie harbors pretensions of seriousness, but its plot is about as plausible as Air Bud (1997).
Still, even if one accepts Conclave’s story, it’s not clear that it presents an actual choice between tradition and progress, between Catholic doctrine and progressive politics. According to John Perry, Senior Lecturer in Theological Ethics at the University of St. Andrews, the ordination of intersex people constitutes a “theological puzzle” that the Church has barely addressed, much less resolved. Perry begins by (rightly) noting that this issue is separate from other controversies surrounding the Sacrament of Holy Orders, including questions about female and transgender ordination. While these cases garner headlines, Perry points out that “there aren’t many sources about Christians who happen to be intersex.” Moreover, when they do emerge, they tend to lack clarity. For instance, in June 2019, the pontifical Congregation for Catholic Education issued ‘Male and Female He Created Them’: Toward a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education, which was intended to help Catholic schools instruct students about how to approach issues of gender identity. This document gives a brief allusion to the intersex phenomenon, but it does so amid a larger discussion of the “fictitious construct” of gender neutrality:
Efforts to go beyond the constitutive male-female sexual difference, such as the ideas of ‘intersex’ or ‘transgender’, lead to a masculinity or femininity that is ambiguous, even though (in a self-contradictory way), these concepts themselves actually presuppose the very sexual difference that they propose to negate or supersede. This oscillation between male and female becomes, at the end of the day, only a ‘provocative’ display against so-called ‘traditional frameworks’ (¶ 25).
It is by no means certain, however, that this statement would apply to the scenario envisioned in Conclave. For one thing, as Perry notes, “intersex and transgender are quite different concepts, which M&F seems to conflate here.” Indeed, since the term “intersex” (strictly speaking) connotes a physical-biological condition with which an intersex person is born—and such was the case with Benitez in Conclave—it cannot be defined as a socio-cultural “effort” to oppose traditional Catholic teaching on sexual difference. Alas, ‘Male and Female He Created Them’ does not dwell on this subject long enough to make an explicit distinction, and it seems likely that the document suffers from what Perry calls “linguistic confusion.”
Perry concludes that, at present, there is no plain doctrinal guidance on how to handle intersex ordination. If an intersex candidate were to manifest male sex characteristics, “a bishop could justly say that he was ‘certain’ that a given ordinand was male, provided he checked all the sex markers so far known to biology and all markers ticked the box indicating Male.” Whether or not this is an adequate and reasonable defense of intersex ordination is a separate question. Perry, for what it’s worth, does not think so. But it is noteworthy that there is some historical support for situations such as Benitez’s. In a June 2023 article, German historian Brendan Röder analyzes four intersex cases heard by the Roman Curia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A salient one with respect to Conclave would be that of Felice Antonio—an Italian novice in the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin and a candidate for Holy Orders. In 1686, Antonio’s superior in the Capuchins expressed concern over the novice’s “sexual ambiguity” and referred his case to Rome. As Röder mentions, the superior’s actions were “in line with a general duty of vigilance” prior to Antonio’s ordination, and, in fact, subsequent medical exams indicated that his “body had some imperfections in the male parts.” Nevertheless, since Antonio considered himself a man, ecclesial authorities were assured that the novice was sufficiently male to serve as a professed religious and priest. This decision adhered to previous canonical teaching. As Röder puts it, “The most influential doctrine developed in medieval canon law was to categorise hermaphrodites according to the sex that was most prevalent.”
The case of Felice Antonio resembles that of Benitez in Conclave. Moreover, while the subject is not discussed in detail, Benitez’s “male parts” are presumably more fully developed than those of Antonio, since no one seems to have ever called Benitez’s gender into question. Of course, modern technology revealed that Benitez had also been born with a uterus, but even then, as Perry argues, recent Church teaching does not address such subtle and unusual cases. Hence, following Röder’s article, there may be canonical precedent in allowing Benitez to serve as a priest and, ultimately, as Bishop of Rome. Nota bene: I say “may be,” not “is.” If one were to create an “honest trailer” for Conclave, it would depict the movie ending in a snoozefest, with Cardinal Lawrence and a team of canon lawyers poring over the Holy See’s archival documents and rulings:
CARDINAL BENITEZ
…so there you have it. That’s my story.
CARDINAL LAWRENCE
I see. Well, this is a real humdinger.
CARDINAL BENITEZ
For sure. I guess I’m out as pope, huh?
CARDINAL LAWRENCE
(chuckling in disbelief)
I mean…maybe. I have to say, this situation is wilder than a billy goat in a pepper patch. I’m going to have to get a team on it right away. O'Malley!
MONSIGNOR O’MALLEY
Yes, Your Eminence.
CARDINAL LAWRENCE
Gather a team of your best men. If you guys work hard enough, we may be able to wrap this up in a month. I’d start with the Pontificium Consilium de Legum Textibus, but, not gonna lie, your guess is as good as mine…
All kidding aside, the point here is that the social media firestorm over Conclave has lacked the nuance that such a situation would actually require. The movie might have occasioned deeper reflection on a sweep of issues, but instead its audience has been segregated into opposing political camps. As alluded to at the outset, the ensuing cause célèbre cannot be pinned on a single actor or party, insofar as discussion about Conclave has passed through digital channels that generate and thrive off of “affective polarizing content.” In short, there’s a rich conversation to be had here—perhaps even in spite of those involved in the film, not to mention those who have denounced it—but it can’t get off the ground.
If this seems like a stretch, just contrast the reception of Conclave with that of Flannery O’Connor’s 1955 short story “A Temple of the Holy Ghost.” To be sure, no one has ever accused O’Connor of disseminating “woke bullshit,” and, if anything, she has been on the verge of being “canceled” herself in recent years. Nevertheless, “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” not only features an intersex character but does so with an eye to spiritual awakening. As with many O’Connor stories, “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” wrests theological meaning from a grotesque occurrence. The story centers on a bright but imperious twelve-year-old girl (referred to only as “the child”), who is simultaneously fascinated by and resentful of her older female cousins. When the older girls return from a night at the local fair, they tell the child of a freak show that they happened upon. Inside a tent “divided into two parts by a black curtain,” a person who (as the girls put it) “was a man and woman both” revealed their physical abnormality to assemblages of male and female onlookers. In a “country voice, slow and nasal,” this so-called “freak” warns the audience not to snicker in contempt:
God made me thisaway and if you laugh He may strike you the same way. This is the way He wanted me to be and I ain't disputing His way. I'm showing you because I got to make the best of it. I expect you to act like ladies and gentlemen. I never done it to myself nor had a thing to do with it but I'm making the best of it. I don't dispute hit.
The child is perplexed by this story, and she later envisions the freak preaching to a congregation and relaying the words of Paul the Apostle: “Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you” (1 Corinthians 6:19). These scenes haunt the child’s imagination, so much so that, the next time she attends Mass, she hears the words of the freak when “the priest raised the monstrance with the Host shining ivory-colored in the center of it.” In this moment, the child confronts both the mystery of God’s will—why am I “thisaway” and not another?—and the radical nature of Christ’s loving sacrifice for all of creation.
That O’Connor used an intersex person to make these points is striking, particularly in light of Conclave’s bifurcating reception. If nothing else, it demonstrates how much the world has changed over the last several decades—or even in just the last 15 years. In point of fact, a 2012 article on Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire website identifies “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” as one of O’Connor’s masterworks—a story that is “grounded in the reality of our incarnational faith,” encouraging the reader to accept “physical realities and limitations.” Doubtless Conclave will never reach the heights of O’Connor’s fiction, and I suspect that more than a few people behind Conclave have not read, much less pondered, “A Temple of the Holy Ghost.” But that’s actually the point, isn’t it? In an epoch of “affective polarizing content,” the goal is not to make us think, just to react.
To be clear, the film Conclave is based on the eponymous 2016 novel written by Robert Harris. However, since I have not read the novel, my comments here are restricted to the 2024 movie and its subsequent reception.