Review

Ambition

Culture

Film & TV

Politics

6 December 2024

6 min read

Why we’re fascinated with power behind closed doors

Conclave captures the powerful chemistry between heaven and earth.

Roger Standing

Roger is a Baptist minister, author and Senior Research Fellow at Spurgeon’s College in London.

A cardinal glances to the side as he stands amid a gather of clergy,

Cardinal Thomas Lawrence played by Ralph Fiennes.

Film Nation.

An ecclesiastical election, conducted behind closed doors, by a group of old men hardly seems a subject for a riveting thriller. Yet, back in 2016, Berkshire-based novelist Robert Harris thought otherwise. Conclave became an international best-seller.

Now it’s been turned into a movie. And, according to the cognoscenti, a rather good one at that. British Vogue lauded it with great enthusiasm:

“It’s a treat in every sense – visually, sonically, dramaturgically – and, as we hurtle into this bleakest of winters, exactly the kind of galvanising, pulse-racing shot in the arm we all need.”

Really?

Well, following its UK premiere at the London Film Festival in October, the BBC were quick to report a potential flurry of Oscar nominations and even that it was ‘thought to be a strong contender for the best picture award’.

So, what’s going on? How has this dangerously dull and turgid subject turned into a narrative that tames the critics and converts the sceptics?

A late night showing on the day of its release at the end of November beckoned me to find out. So off I went with my wife, after she had finished Gospel Choir practice.

Directed by award winning film-maker Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front), it stars Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini.

The premise is simple. The Pope is dead, and the Cardinals of the Catholic Church convene from around the world to choose his successor. But this, of course, is only the beginning.

Sequestered in the Vatican the prelates are cut off from outside influence as the secret process of electing a new pontiff is enacted. But this does not stop events, past and present, from impacting and shaping their deliberations.

Overseen by Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Fiennes), the British Dean of the College of Cardinals, the story unfolds as he negotiates these successive revelations and happenings. Along the way he is also wrestling in his own faith for spiritual reality and personal integrity.

As they gather, the not-so-friendly fraternal rivalry of the cardinals and the manoeuvring of the leading contenders sets up a presenting series of tensions for the Conclave:

Cardinal Bellini (Tucci) is the Vatican’s theologically progressive, yet diffident, Secretary of State
Cardinal Tremblay (Lithgow) is a slippery and ambitious, self-promoting Canadian conservative
Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) is the forthright and reactionary traditionalist Patriarch of Venice
Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) is a theologically conservative and populist Nigerian who offers the possibility of making history as the first Black pope.

Then, at the last minute, into the mix enters a cardinal that no one knew of. Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz) is a Mexican who arrives claiming the late pope appointed him Archbishop of Kabul in pectore (in secret) prior to his death.

Shuttling between their living quarters in the Domus Sanctae Marthae and the Sistine Chapel, the venue for their voting process, the story unfolds. A complex interplay of ecclesiastical politics, theology and spirituality intermingle with issues of identity, character and choice to make for a heady mix. At stake, or is that on offer, is the power of the Papacy.

Reflecting the church at large the Conclave is a community of conservatives and liberals, traditionalists and progressives, populists and academics, activists and administrators.

Like the world at large, all human life is here. Men with hidden secrets, driven by ignoble motives that often dress themselves in more noble apparel. Ambition, greed, ego and privilege rub shoulders with graciousness, sincerity and self-sacrificial service. Sometimes even in the same person. The human condition is a complicated one. It seems that power retains its age-old allure and ability to corrupt.

And maybe that’s it. For all the secrecy and mystery that surrounds a papal election, right down to the colour of the smoke, it is a human concoction. Human fingerprints are all over it, just like they are all over the church.

The church aspires to be better. To be shaped by a higher ideal. To properly be ‘the body of Christ’ and represent the imago dei in the world. To so inhabit the love and grace of God that through its life and witness God might touch and transform the world for the better. Yet, as one of the Italian cardinals correctly, if too easily, argues, “We are mortal men; we serve an ideal. We cannot always be ideal.”

Indeed, the great apostle St. Paul had to confess, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect …”, but he is committed to go further, “… [yet] I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” There is an ideal to pursue.

As the cardinals progress through successive rounds of voting the field of candidates narrows and the required two-thirds majority comes within reach. Yet the prospects of the main characters rise and fall through the twists and turns of the plot as it heads to its inevitable climax.

Then one final, unexpected and flabbergasting reveal hits the audience from out of left field. It is a masterful denouement to the tale.

Speaking about how it all came together Harris revealed:

“I approached this not as a Catholic and not as an expert in the Church. So my preparation began by reading the gospels, which are revolutionary. And the contrast between that and this great edifice of ritual and pomp and power and wealth of the Church is striking … There's also this question of can you freeze anything at a point nearly 2000 years ago? Haven't the world and humanity evolved?”

As we drove home at gone midnight I found it hard to disagree with Vogue.

The visual spectacle created by cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine plays wonderfully with the renaissance setting of the Vatican. It is a beautiful and luscious feast for the eyes.

Volker Bertelmann’s teasing creativity with the score made the drama come alive and heightened what has been an unforgettable experience.

But for me, most of all, it was the drama. The story that was told. The unfolding of events and the interplay with people and their motives, their relationships and their vested interests. It is layered and nuanced and complex, just like real life.

It has left me pondering once again the chemistry between heaven and earth. Between our freewill and agency as individuals and the mystery of the divine presence and the fruit of prayer.

As the cardinals prepare for the final vote a waft of air blows gently through a broken window in the Sistine Chapel and rustles their voting papers. Is Berger tipping his hat to the presence of the Spirit of God, present and active in human affairs?

Perhaps the last word should go to Robert Harris.

“With temporal power, or indeed spiritual power, it is very difficult to avoid factions, scheming, the lesser of two evils—all the compromises that go into running any huge organization and trying to keep, not just hundreds, but thousands of people onside … I have a lot of time for politicians, just as I have a lot of time for these cardinals, because they are grappling with almost insoluble problems. But someone has to do it. Someone has to run a society. And I've tried to write about them with a degree of sympathy.”

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Column

Belief

Christmas culture

Creed

25 December 2024

7 min read

Why the incarnation adds up for me

There’s much more to it than maths and linguistics.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

An abstract image of red and gold fluid shapes akin to stained glass, seem to depict a face and an upstretched hand.

Jr Korpa on Unsplash.

I’m rubbish at maths.

This hasn’t actually held me back all that much in life because I’m a theologian and biblical scholar by profession; I basically train vicars for a living. Being bad at maths means I fit in well in the Church because – I don’t know if you’ve noticed – Christianity is rubbish at maths too.

We go to school and we’re taught things like one plus one plus one equals three. We then go to Church and we’re told one Father plus one Son plus one Holy Spirit now somehow equals one God.

And the rubbish maths doesn’t stop there.

The Church also says that Jesus is God incarnate: that He is 100 per cent God and 100 per cent human. Even I know that this isn’t how percentages work.

But what does it mean to say that Jesus is 100 per cent God and 100 per cent human? More importantly: why should you care? What difference does this make to you?

What is the incarnation?

If you’ve ever had chilli con carne, you might know this literally means ‘chilli with meat’; ‘carne’ means ‘meat’. And the ‘carne’ in ‘incarnation’ is exactly the same: it means ‘meat’ or ‘flesh’.

So, we can think of ‘incarnation’ as ‘enfleshment’, or ‘taking on flesh’, or ‘becoming flesh and blood’. This is what we mean when we talk about ‘incarnation’: that someone or something has become flesh and blood.

In the Bible we read that, while Jesus “existed in the form of God … He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, assuming human likeness.”

And this is where the maths of the whole enterprise starts to get tricky.

The Bible does not claim that Jesus stops being God when He is human, or that He is somehow ‘less God’ in some way. Nor does it say that Jesus is anything less than completely human.

The word translated as ‘form’ in English – the ‘form’ of God, and the ‘form of a human servant’ – is morphē in Greek (the language the New Testament was written in). It’s where we get English words like ‘morph’. The animated character Morph is a little clay man who changes his form – his shape – at will. The Mighty, Morphing Power Rangers are people who change their form to become superheroes.

Something like this happens to Jesus in the Gospels, too, when Jesus’ face begins to shine like the sun and his clothes become unnaturally white. Most English translations say that Jesus is ‘transfigured’.

I don’t know about you, but that’s not a word I often use; things are very rarely ‘transfigured’ in my life.

The Greek word underlying this is metamorpheō, where we get English words like ‘metamorphosis’ from. Hopefully you can see that morph (the word for ‘form’) in the middle of the word metamorpheō. And whenever a Greek word has meta- at the start of it – like in metamorpheō. It’s to do with change.

Here, then, Jesus is literally trans-form-ed. Jesus, while in human form, is now revealed in His divine form.

It’s not that Jesus becomes God in this moment, or that he stops being human. Rather, Jesus is revealed in the transfiguration – in his metamorphosis – to be, and to have always been, fully God and fully human.

And so, when the Church celebrates the incarnation at Christmas, it celebrates God’s perfect eternal Son becoming embodied – taking on human flesh and a human body – in the person of Jesus.

This is not the life of independence, autonomy, and self-sufficiency I am so often encouraged to cultivate by the world around me. It’s a life of needing other people

Okay, at this point, you might be thinking: “That’s lovely, but who cares?”

Well, the Church’s claim that Jesus is 100 per cent God and 100 per vent human is deeply important for every one of us. Without it, we’re scuppered. In particular, the incarnation matters for at least four reasons.

First, the incarnation means we really do see God when we see Jesus. Jesus is fully God. In Jesus, “the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,” to use the Bible’s language. In other words, then, there is no God hidden behind Jesus.

Jesus makes it genuinely possible to know God; if Jesus was anything less than fully God, then we would only know a diluted, watered down version of God through Him.

Second, without the incarnation there can be no rescuing of humanity, or of the world around us.

You don’t have to look very far to see the worst of humanity. All too often it feels as though those in power are exactly the last people we would want to wield it. Whether you’d call yourself a Christian or not, I think we can all agree that things need fixing.

The Church claims Jesus came to fix things.

Being fully God and fully human, Jesus acts as our representative to God, and God’s representative to us. He overcomes any difference between God and the world, and restores it to the glorious state in which God intended it to be.

But this act of fixing – of setting things right, of restoration, of transformation – is only possible for someone fully God and fully human. Only the incarnation makes it possible for us and the world around us to be put right.

Third, because Jesus is fully human, His life shows us what it means to live well.

Jesus is the most ‘human’ human who has ever human-ed. He is a human cranked up to eleven. Jesus’ life is what it looks like to live the perfect human life. He does not imitate our humanity; we imitate His. We are not the norm for what humanity looks like; He is.

But Jesus’ life does not look like my idea of perfect. Jesus’ perfect human life involved complete and utter dependency on other people.

As a baby, Jesus’ mum and dad cleaned up his poo and His sick; Mary probably breastfed Him. As a child, Jesus relied on other people to be educated. As a man, Jesus had no home: His dad probably now dead and His mum convinced he’d gone mad, He relied on other people for shelter, for clothes, and for food.

This is not the life of independence, autonomy, and self-sufficiency I am so often encouraged to cultivate by the world around me. It’s a life of needing other people.

The incarnation then, shows us what it does – and does not – mean to live well.

Fourth, and finally, the incarnation means that none of the awful things that we do to each other and are done to us by others define our value, our worth, or our humanity.

Jesus was a victim of sexual abuse.

Some people are very resistant to this idea. I wonder if there are misguided notions of shame at play here: as though this would somehow make Jesus less human, or less God, or less saviour.

Again, Jesus has other ideas.

All four of the Gospels tell us that Jesus was stripped naked as part of His torture and death at the hands of the Romans. And we know from historical records that this is what the Romans did to those they crucified: they stripped them and they tortured them nakedly and in public, as an act of very deliberate humiliation and degradation.

The radical claim of Jesus’ life – of the incarnation – is that this does not make Him less-than-human in any way.

No, remember: Jesus is more human than anyone who’s ever lived. He is the norm for what it means to be human, not us. Nor does it make Him less God, or less of a saviour. Jesus’ perfect life tells victims of abuse that their lives are not tarnished, or diminished, or downgraded through the actions of others.

The incarnation, then, is God’s decisive act to show the world, once and for all, that He is for us – that He is for you, and for me. So much so, that God has chosen to become entirely like us, that we might become more like Him.

In the incarnation, God decisively declares the goodness of humanity by freely choosing to become fully human. To be human, then, is not to be someone or something that God flees from. Rather, God loves humanity so much – He loves you so much – that He has decided He cannot be without you, and He cannot be Himself without becoming like you.