Church Potluck: A Smorgasbord of Christian Curiosity
Church Potluck serves up thoughtful, friendly, informal conversation at the intersection of Christianity and contemporary culture. Just like a church potluck, we offer variety: a variety of topics, a variety of academic disciplines, and a variety of Christian traditions. Guests are friends and colleagues who are also experts in the fields of sociology, political science, theology, philosophy, divinity, and more.
Church Potluck: A Smorgasbord of Christian Curiosity
Conclave, The Movie: A Papal-Picking Primer
In this episode of Church Potluck, we dive into the critically acclaimed movie Conclave (eight Oscar nominations, one win), the visually stunning, slow-burning thriller about Vatican ritual, political intrigue, and a surprising final twist that invites deeper reflection. Join Dale McConkey and friends Christy Snider and Michael Papazian as they reflect on the film’s themes of faith and doubt, ambition and humility, and the tension between tradition and reform in the Catholic Church. Our panel of Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox voices weighs in on the movie’s historical elements, theological undercurrents, and what it reveals about institutional leadership. With a dose of humor, some friendly papal trivia, and plenty of thoughtful discussion, this episode blends cinematic curiosity with spiritual insight—Church Potluck style.
The views expressed on Church Potluck are solely those of the participants and do not represent any organization.
Hey everybody, this episode of Church Potluck was actually recorded way back in the fall of 2024, so not quite a year ago. We did this when the movie Conclave first came out and had a great conversation about the movie, but life got busy and I never actually published it out there for you all to listen to and it just sort of sat on my computer. And then, when the Oscars came out and Conclave was nominated, I said, oh, what a great opportunity to finally put this out there. And it didn't happen then either. And so now, with a Conclave actually happening, with the death of Pope Francis, this is one more opportunity, and so I figure it's now or never. So, finally, here is the episode on the movie Conclave. I hope you enjoy it. Enjoy it. Oh, I don't think this has happened for you yet, christy, but you, michael and Michael Bailey, you all are becoming famous because of my podcast. How, at least amongst my golf buddies, I'll be talking, I'll be telling a story and I'll say, oh, you wouldn't know him, but Michael Papazian Is that from your podcast.
Speaker 3:Right Word is getting out and that happened to Michael Bailey Name-racking. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1:Who knows where the ceiling is for you here? Right, yeah, and I'm sure that will happen for you eventually, eventually. So Welcome everyone, to everyone, to Church Potluck, where we are serving up a smorgasbord of Christian curiosity. I'm your host, dale McConkie, sociology professor and United Methodist pastor, and there are two keys to a good Church Potluck plenty of variety and engaging conversation. And this is exactly what we are trying to do here on Church Potluck sitting down with friends and sharing our ideas on a variety of topics from a variety of academic disciplines and a variety of Christian traditions. Welcome back everybody. It's good to see you guys.
Speaker 2:Glad to be here. Yeah, it's good to have you.
Speaker 1:This is only our second recording of the semester and you were not on the first one, so this is your maiden voyage in the new academic year. A lot has happened. We've elected a new president, we've hired a new president here at Barry, so we've got lots going on. I'll give you a choice. You can comment on either one of those, either one of them, okay.
Speaker 3:I guess I can comment on the Barry president.
Speaker 1:We're very happy, which makes sense because you were on the search committee for that.
Speaker 3:I was on the search committee and we were very happy to have Dr Sandeep Mazumder, who is currently dean of the business school at Baylor, and I think he's really going to do a great job here at Baylor, so I'm looking forward to working with him.
Speaker 1:Even people who aren't connected to Baylor, who are just out in the community, who have gone and watched his video, which was very well done, are sounding excited about him. And, christy, that leaves you. You have to talk about the election. No, you don't have to.
Speaker 2:I would just say that one of the things I like to do at election time is to see what were the undergrad degrees of the people who the president chooses for their cabinet, and I have not worked that out yet.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:Just to see if there's some humanities, people in there, yeah, yeah, just to see if there's some humanities people in there.
Speaker 3:Our vice president-elect was a philosophy and political science major at. Ohio State. So he's the most powerful philosophy major in the world there you go.
Speaker 1:I like that and my parents being from my mom being from Ann Arbor and my dad going to University of Michigan, I guess the Ohio State part just cancels the rest of that Well. Anyway, it's good to be here. We've already introduced you two, but let's go ahead and do it more formally. Let's welcome back Christy Snyder. I was waiting for the applause.
Speaker 2:The audience was a little delayed there. Yeah, glad to be here. I am a historian at Berry College and I am also a Catholic.
Speaker 1:Which is very important for today's conversations, and also our Catholic expert, michael Papazian.
Speaker 3:Thank you, it's good to be back again. I call myself Catholic adjacent. I like that.
Speaker 1:We have a lot in common, so I need a laugh button. I don't have a laugh button.
Speaker 3:No, no, that wasn't that funny.
Speaker 1:That's why we need the button. Oh, I see. Anyway, what are we going to talk about today? I think we need to have some music for that as well. I love this music. This is my favorite. This is my favorite, Jesus Christ movie star Sure, do we believe? What movies say you are?
Speaker 3:Jesus Christ movie star.
Speaker 1:All right, so this might be a bit of a stretch, because Jesus is not really the movie star in this movie, but it's about Jesus's church, right, the Catholic brand of Jesus's church. So we're going to talk about the movie Conclave, a suspenseful, mystery-soaked, intrigue-filled, dramatic, political, religious thriller called Conclave. What'd y'all think? We'll just get just a thumbs up, thumbs down part of it first.
Speaker 2:So I really enjoyed it and I thought it was. I didn't think it would be a thriller, so it's not a thriller like James Bond or whatever, but it definitely it's the slowest thriller in all of human history in a good way. Yes, and so it definitely had me interested in what was going to happen the whole time that I'm watching it.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, I agree. Thumbs up, thumbs up. It was a great movie, I really enjoyed it and it was really just gripping.
Speaker 1:And it's getting very good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and everywhere else that I can see. Actually, we should mention that the three of us all watched it together. That's right, it was fun. Just a little side note before we get into the movie. Was that something unique for you? I hardly ever go to the theaters these days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did go with one of our other colleagues and saw Wolverine versus who was he versus Deadpool or something?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And so totally different. But sometimes it is nice to be in a theater again to watch.
Speaker 1:It was, and I think there were things about this movie that made it nice to see it on the big screen. One of the things that I noticed was just how visually stunning it was, and I've read some over some reviews and they really haven't mentioned that too much. But it for it wasn't filmed in the Vatican, but they found some very Vatican-like places to record on.
Speaker 3:They were in the. I guess the pseudo or the virtual. Sistine Chapel, but it looked like they were there, but they weren't. That's right.
Speaker 1:I have no idea how they did that and it wasn't AI. No, I don't think so, yeah.
Speaker 2:And just the way how the cardinals were dressed and during the one scene with the umbrellas, the red and the white.
Speaker 3:it was just really stunning. I thought, yeah, I thought just the visually it was stunning and actually part of it it's got to win Oscar for costume design.
Speaker 1:I think you would hope and I guess this is a good time to mention that we are going to have spoilers throughout. We're going to go ahead and just talk about the movie, and so if you don't want to listen to this until after you've watched the movie, please go do that. And there's also one big spoiler that we won't talk about until the very end of the podcast, but when we do get to that, we will make sure we let you know about the spoiler, because we'll play this Spoiler alert, because we'll play this Spoiler alert, all right. So when you hear this Spoiler alert, just realize that we're going to do a big reveal at the end of the episode, so you might want to turn it off at that time.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, just so much thought into something, just like walking down a hallway, just the grandiosity that it felt, the artwork surrounding it just really for me, just brought me into the movie in a way that I don't always notice visual effects and things, but that was very striking to me. Christy, you are our one and only Catholic, not Catholic-adjacent person on the panel today. Just as someone who is Catholic, what were your thoughts going through watching it as someone of the Catholic faith?
Speaker 2:So I was. So some of the things that really struck me was, right at the very beginning, the treatment of the Pope who had just passed away, and how it brought like all the people, I assume, who are in the Vatican hierarchy together. So that was interesting. And then how quickly thoughts turned to we need to now choose somebody new. There's going to be this election. That has to happen.
Speaker 1:Yes, and hence the term conclave, the title, so Michael or Christy. Just let's give some context for people who may not be familiar with that term and what happens when a pope dies. What is a conclave?
Speaker 3:Literally, it means they're locked up, there's a key in there, yeah, and they're sequestered, basically until they elect a pope.
Speaker 1:So these are all the bishop cardinals all the cardinals from all over the globe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let me just say I think that was also one of the things that impressed me by the portrayal that on one level, when you look at all the cardinals in their vestments, you've got a really and also just the people really a good idea of the whole the diversity of the Catholic Church. Geographically, ethnically, every nation in the world is represented and of course, catholic means universal. So that embodied that On one level it's diverse. On the other, they're all old men. So it's an interesting juxtaposition where you got all that. And as an Eastern Christian, I especially appreciated that we saw some of the Eastern cardinals. So they're Eastern Catholic churches and some of the Eastern Catholic churches have cardinals, and in the depiction in the movie where you could notice that some of them were not wearing the traditional Latin cardinal vestments but were wearing, I think, syriac or Coptic, I wasn't quite sure. So it also represented the diversity of languages and cultures in the church.
Speaker 1:There was so much of that I said I know I'm missing stuff here. I know that I'm not understanding why they're purple and they're red. There's so much going on that I do want to go back and just have the theater to myself so I can ask you questions as the movie's going along. What am I missing? What am I missing here? But that was very helpful and, along with this, being sequestered and staying sequestered until they have elected a new pope. It is a very democratic process, but it's also a democratic process that is just steeped in centuries and centuries of tradition, and that was, I think, again beautifully portrayed. I had forgotten about the needle going through the votes as a way of knowing that they were counted. And then I did know about the black smoke and the white smoke, the black smoke meaning unsuccessful vote, we don't have a pope yet, and then that's the burning of the ballots. But then you burn the ballot, put a little different color ash in there and all of a sudden you've got white smoke saying we have our card, have our pope.
Speaker 2:So I am not a church historian, but I was very interested in where did this process come from? And so apparently it is a process from around the 12, oh wait, 1059, the 12, oh wait, 1059, oh no, 12, I'm sorry. 1268 is when the first conclave happened, and the problem was they couldn't choose, they couldn't agree on who would be Pope, and so there's like three years where they don't have a Pope, a sitting Pope, and finally they get them together again, they lock them in this room. They still can't come to a decision, and so, supposedly, the people of Rome tore the roof off of where they were meeting so they would be subject to the weather and only fed them water and bread until they finally came up with okay, here's your Pope. Came up with okay, here's your pope. But it was also a way to get it out of having influence from secular leaders, whether it be Byzantine emperors or other emperors. So I found that very interesting that there is this long kind of historical reasoning for why they do it the way they do it.
Speaker 1:Very cool and I want to get into the intrigue and the political aspects of this movie. But first I need your help in identifying the characters. I am terrible. I know the actors sometimes and sometimes I don't, but especially the names, and so I'm going to give you the name. We're going to have a game show here.
Speaker 2:I am bad at this too, yeah name.
Speaker 1:We're gonna actually we're gonna we're gonna have a game show here.
Speaker 3:I already see michael lapazian looking at my notes over here.
Speaker 1:So I'm not cheating, all right, and I didn't come. Who's that actor? We'll, we'll just do it that way. Who's that actor? So I'm gonna give you one, I'm gonna give you the name, and then you got buzzers there. Michael, give, show us what your buzzer sounds like, all right. And christy, what is your buzzer? All right, show us what your buzzer sounds like, all right. And Christy, what is your buzzer? All right? So there's your buzzer sounds. I'm going to give. Do you want me to? I can do it either way. I can give you the actor and you tell me who the character is, or I can give you the character and then give you the actor. Which one do you prefer?
Speaker 2:Character.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, okay, here's one, cardinal Bellini.
Speaker 3:Yes, stanley Tucci.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good job, good job. But if you hesitated like that on that one and Chris, you didn't even try.
Speaker 2:This may not be a good game show.
Speaker 1:All right, so well, let's just start off and we'll have a little conversation about, after this, one Kind of the main. These are all very much of an ensemble cast, but at the core is Cardinal Lawrence, played by. Ralph Fiennes Is that right, actually I don't have my boo bud, but no, you're very close, not Ralph Fiennes.
Speaker 3:Ralph, ralph, ralph. Yeah, I thought he pronounced it Rafe, but I could be wrong, oh that could be too, and I thought it was Finney's. It doesn't matter, I thought it was.
Speaker 1:Finney's Christy gets it.
Speaker 3:No, that's fine. This is like Jeopardy.
Speaker 1:Who is Ralph Fiennes English List? I did not even know that he was Voldemort.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great actor.
Speaker 1:He's a very good actor. He did a wonderful job. Have you seen him in the Menu? Have you all watched the Menu?
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 1:That is just recommend. It's a disturbing movie but I encourage you to watch that sometime. But anyway, and my son and I both like the Grand Budapest Hotel, we watched that together.
Speaker 3:So many things that he's involved in, so we might just go, rather than going through the rest of these, which I'm afraid. Oh, here I'll give you a nice Sister, Agnes Isabella Rossellini. Yeah, yeah, she might win an Oscar for that, they're saying.
Speaker 2:Oh really.
Speaker 1:Is that right? Apparently?
Speaker 3:yeah, that's what I just read this morning in my research All right.
Speaker 1:I wasn't going to go there this fast, but why, I don't know. Okay, because I don't want to say that she was not, and so I want to be careful that she wasn't shoehorned in there. But this is not a movie that would pass the Bechdel test.
Speaker 1:No, oh no, not at all Because you have to have more than one woman in the movie to have a conversation and there are. I'm over-exaggerating, but this is very much, as you have already said, michael, a movie about older men who are the ones in charge, but Sister Agnes does play a pivotal role in that.
Speaker 2:At least yeah in a couple of scenes. But I think one scene is where she probably has the strongest presence of yeah.
Speaker 1:What did you remember about that scene?
Speaker 2:So that is a scene where she is just commenting on how the nuns are not allowed to have a say in the selection of the new leader, but they do have opinions about how things should work and when things are being done incorrectly, men should be called to account, whether they are priests or cardinals or not. And yeah, I would say that's probably the part that she might be the reason why she's not.
Speaker 1:Her little monologue there was powerful and speaking for the people and a statement for today as well, I'm assuming, not just, and actually the movie is set in relatively contemporary I don't know the exact timeline, but it's set in contemporary times.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they all had cell phones which they could not bring in with them and things like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, one of the sources I was reading said that it was pretty obvious that the Pope that passed away was supposed to be Francis.
Speaker 1:So, I'm assuming this is like future, near future perhaps what were the themes that you thought came through in the movie? We start off talking about the political intrigue and the voting process and all the sequestering. Do you think it was a coincidence that this was released in late October, right before the elections?
Speaker 3:I thought there would be more kind of American politics references, or at least more overt ones. I didn't pick up on that many, but Christy you might have.
Speaker 2:You're shaking your head. No, Christy, no I didn't really see the political election connection the same way.
Speaker 1:When something at the very beginning of the movie, when they start talking about we need an election, I said, oh my goodness, this is going to be a moral tale for us today, a morality tale for American politics today, and I agree that very quickly it slipped into just it was all about who's the next pope going to be, and I did not picture overt messages about American politics, but we saw a lot of American style politics going on in the vote and I think that's one of the points to be made that here are people who are supposed to be serving God, supposed to be doing this very humbly, seeking the Holy Spirit's direction on who is pope. But you see a tremendous amount of political factioning and a lot of behind-the-scenes wrangling, a lot of closed-door deals. I guess it's always closed-door. So what did youall think about that? Any further thoughts on?
Speaker 3:that On it being closed door or American connected to politics in general.
Speaker 1:No, just the way that they portrayed the political side and the ambitious side of these.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know what cardinals do when they're locked in together, but from what I've read, these are extremely ambitious men and while you're not supposed to let on that, you want to be pope. Everyone wants to be pope.
Speaker 1:And that came out right.
Speaker 2:Everyone was trying to act like they didn't want it, but you want it. It was very. I did think, and I do think there's probably a couple of ideological factions within the. Catholic Church, definitely represented by the current Pope Francis as well as the former Pope Benedict and I thought that came out fairly well and references to maybe other factions as well, although not as strong.
Speaker 1:Something I liked about it is it was clearly tradition versus progressivism, right In terms of is our Pope going to be an agent of reform or an agent of going back, and I thought that was done very well. But it was also regional aspects right. Are we really going to have an African Pope? I remember when I first was here at Barry I think this was right around the time that Pope Francis was named as the pope there was a lot of speculation I forget which cardinal it was, but that perhaps the Catholic Church would have its first African pope.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a Cardinal Serra who is I believe is he from Ghana, I think one of the West African countries who's often named as a potential pope.
Speaker 1:And so the Italians, oh yeah, the Italians. I forget his name, but it was very much set up as the reactionary conservative that was Cardinal Tedesco. Yes, yes, there you go. I don't know the actor's name.
Speaker 3:He has a long Italian name, but I don't remember it.
Speaker 2:No me either.
Speaker 3:Although he was also from the critics, I read they thought he did a really good job.
Speaker 1:From the critics I read they thought that he really, for a fairly minor character, really shined in the movie and I will say I thought the casting was wonderful. Again, this is not my strength, but I really enjoyed the casting. I like Stanley Tucci in anything. The one that didn't ring with me, quite true, was John Lithgow. I just still saw him as the alien from Third Rock in the Sun and I know he's done so many other things and he's a serious actor, but I always saw him as the actor rather than as his character, for whatever reason. That had trouble. That's the only person I had trouble with.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for whatever reason, he didn't sound like a cardinal to me, so I don't know.
Speaker 2:And I thought the Wait.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm sorry, oh, go ahead. Was he American in the movie Canadian Canadian? So maybe that's the reason that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course You've got to To be a cardinal and his way of trying to obtain the papacy was. It did not strike me as legitimate as some of the others that were being talked about. Very underhanded, yeah, very underhanded this idea that even after he's supposedly been dismissed by the previous pope, he's not going to admit that. And yeah, that part just did not strike me as being as realistic, maybe.
Speaker 1:And he flies someone in to be part of a scandal, to expose the scandal, and that's one of those things that if you get found out, of course that would just destroy your reputation. So that was harder to suspend. Disbelief on that perhaps.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I may have a more negative view of human nature. I actually think something like that may happen. I don't know. People do all sorts of devious and underhanded things that seem incomprehensible, but in politics and in the church, things happen.
Speaker 1:This has no relation to the selection of our current president for Barry right. Oh, no, okay, I just want to make sure.
Speaker 3:No, I'm just saying. I said these things do happen.
Speaker 1:Not in academic politics.
Speaker 3:Okay, there you go, never in academic politics.
Speaker 1:Okay, there you go. Never in academic politics. Another big theme in the movie is that of faith and doubt, and the more progressive wing of the Catholic Church, and especially the Phineas character. Cardinal Lawrence, who is the one presiding over the conclave, gives a speech and just really comes out saying how doubt is very important to faith, and he actually concludes his monologue for me a very powerful monologue he concludes it with may God grant us a pope who doubts. And I was curious about what you thought about that monologue or if you had any other further thoughts.
Speaker 2:I've got further thoughts on it, but yeah, I thought his character was the most moving character. So here's somebody who had asked to be released from his position.
Speaker 3:He had asked. Yeah, he had asked.
Speaker 2:The former pope did not want to release him because he was doubting his faith and questioning his faith, and yet many times within the movie when other people needed comforting, he prayed with them. He tried to help them in their kind of faith beliefs, and so I thought that was a really well done part of the film.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah, I guess to many people it's shocking to say that a pope who doubts or a clergyman who but I think it's pretty common I hear all the time about people who are even in, who are committed to the church, who have doubts all the time. Yes, I can't imagine someone of faith not having doubts maybe not all the time, every now and then.
Speaker 1:I think that's why his character was so compelling, was because there was an earnestness, right, and he said I wish I had it written down and I forgot to put it in my notes here. But he said certainty is the enemy of faith, that if you have certainty then you don't question, you don't have that wonder and you don't have that awe. And so having doubts allows that opening for mystery. And I found that to be a very wonderful speech and the only thing I was critiquing it in my pastorally role and just also in my professional life that sometimes we use doubt and it might be just semantics, but doubt seems to imply a negative view of your faith. Right, that you're a dismissive view of your faith.
Speaker 1:But if you put in the word questioning, or if you put in the word wondering, or if you put in the word church, potluck, curiosity, right that you're open to a diversity of understandings that are beyond how you understand God. I think that makes it for me very compelling, beyond how you understand God. I think that makes it for me very compelling, and doubt might be one aspect of that. But I don't know if I'm changing the message that was trying to come across in the movie or not. So you're nodding but not talking. This is.
Speaker 3:We're doubting and questioning.
Speaker 1:So you're doubting my response there.
Speaker 3:One issue, from a Catholic perspective, of course, is that you've got all these dogmas that you're not supposed to doubt, you're not supposed to question. So there may be certain things that come up for questioning, but the central dogmas of the church are supposed to be accepted without question. That's a good point. And so there is that tension. You can see why the traditionalists would be made very nervous by a pope who doubts what is he going to doubt next? Is he going to doubt the resurrection? Is he going to doubt the sacraments, the Eucharist, that it's the real presence. So there's that danger that when you begin doubting certain things, that's going to lead to other doubting things that maybe, from a Catholic perspective, should not be doubted.
Speaker 1:That's a great point because on the other end of the spectrum in terms of Lurgy, but our fundamentalist Christians I have often heard growing up and studying various perspectives very often you'll hear fundamentalists say if you doubt this, then it will lead to doubting that, it will lead to doubting this and it will all come crashing down. So if you don't hold on to our beliefs in total, if you don't believe every single thing in the Bible, it would be the fundamentalist thing. If you don't believe every single thing, then if you question this, why don't you question that? And it all comes down, which I think is a false argument.
Speaker 2:And I do think there was a you saw this with his character in the movie a fear of not wanting to be a hypocrite either, so that he really pushes off any suggestion that he should be Pope. I think because he realizes that by having that doubt it would just be illegitimate for him to serve in that role until towards the end, where he's like convinced that maybe I should do this yeah.
Speaker 1:Actually being called. Come on, everybody wants to be Pope.
Speaker 3:Come on Admit it.
Speaker 1:So we haven't talked about one of the characters in the movie and for a while you don't understand why this person is there. I was wondering. I was very curious where they were going with this right, and let's see what is his name. Is it Benitez? Yes, cardinal Benitez, who is a cardinal who nobody else knows about because he was fairly recently credentialized as a cardinal by the pope, who is now dead, and I forget exactly why nobody knows it's in Latin, in the chest or in the heart.
Speaker 3:So the Pope can name cardinals and not reveal that they're cardinals. And, from what I've read, in some cases the Pope may not even tell the cardinal who was named that they're cardinals. But it is done. I think we know that Pope John Paul II named at least four in pectore cardinals during his papacy, mostly Eastern European ones who were under Soviet domination. The reason why it's done is so that you can have a cardinal in a particular region and not expose them to persecution. I think it's also done in China, where the Catholic Church is severely repressed by the communist regime.
Speaker 2:Although I did read as well that if it is not revealed at some point before the Pope who has made this cardinal, it doesn't count after he dies. So the fact that yeah, so that was like a breaking of church doctrine, that they'd be recognized after the pope had passed away.
Speaker 3:Oh, so there was one blooper in the movie?
Speaker 2:Yes, at least one, at least one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. I'm going to enjoy my own podcast because I had missed that. I heard the in pectore, but I did not. I just thought that man lost paperwork.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the bureaucratic error, I assume, because he had been named the Archbishop of Kabul in Afghanistan, where of course there are very few Catholics.
Speaker 2:Very few Catholics.
Speaker 3:Although there was a. This might have been a reference to the fact that recently, pope Francis named a cardinal in Mongolia, which only has about 1,000 Catholics in the entire country, and so maybe I don't know if that was an inspiration in the movie, but the idea is in a country like Afghanistan, you probably wouldn't want to be recognized as the leader of the Catholic church, but rather just remain incognito or under the radar, and yet he was named a cardinal. The fact that he was named a cardinal is what's quite extraordinary, because usually you think about cardinals being the archbishops of big cities like New York as a cardinal and Los Angeles. You don't think of these small, out-of-the-way places like Kabul and Mongolia, which don't have substantial Catholic populations, as having a cardinal. Very interesting.
Speaker 1:That was actually very helpful. Something that I had trouble suspending my disbelief in was the fact that this up to that moment unknown cardinal would actually receive votes on the very first ballot right. So the movie shows all the big name cardinals, all the major political players getting roughly even amounts, but nobody getting anywhere near the two thirds majority needed to become the pope. But this guy gets like five votes on the first and nobody knew him. And so what do you think was going on there? I actually asked my good friend ChatGPT about this and got some answers.
Speaker 1:But, did you have any problem with that, or I thought that was a little unusual.
Speaker 3:I thought it was odd, because you kept us guessing who was supporting him yeah, who was his friend or whatever and why were they supporting him? And maybe they just put that in as just like a teaser, something for us to talk about in the podcast, it made it clear that this person would play a role later on.
Speaker 1:That's true, yeah, so maybe that had something to do with it.
Speaker 2:And I thought, I don't know, I thought maybe it was that, yeah, they had been serving in this dangerous position and hadn't they come from like a dangerous position even before that? He was in Baghdad before that, and so I thought it was just maybe a show of, I don't know like you must be a great Catholic if you have done these jobs, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's what I uncovered, or at least got gleaned from my research. The other possible thing is that was a negative vote. I don't want any of these power brokers, so I'm going to vote for the person least likely to be able to become Pope type of a thing broker so I'm going to vote for the person least likely to be able to become Pope type of a thing. Before we start getting into the deeper issues, here the big spoiler what do you think was the purpose of the explosion? Was that just to add some drama? Or did we need to have that explosion to have the speech that came after the explosion that led up to that? I was trying to think what the purpose behind that was.
Speaker 3:It was dramatic. Yeah, it was dramatic yeah. And artistic yeah.
Speaker 2:So before we got the speech, I thought that it was actually like a signal to Lawrence, who had just voted for himself, that this is God saying no, you should not be pope. So that's how I took it.
Speaker 1:And I think you're probably right. So I'm asking a very silly question what does the voice of God mean in this context? Yeah, because it happened at a very dramatic moment. I think that's actually probably a very profound thing that I was dismissing.
Speaker 3:I think God did appear later, right, because when Benitez was elected right before I think he was elected wasn't there a wind that you heard through the windows of the Sistine Chapel? Of course that's a reference to the Holy Spirit. Because Catholics believe that it's not really the cardinals who are choosing the Pope, but the Holy Spirit is moving them, so their choice is guided by God. So really, the Pope is chosen by God. So the movie did make a reference to that.
Speaker 1:I think yes absolutely.
Speaker 3:The explosion was, of course, a different kind of message. I got this because, supposedly, these were Islamic-inspired terrorists. Yes, and so it gave the sense of the church in Europe being besieged, almost so. It gave the sense of the church in Europe being besieged, almost that. Here we are in Rome, the center of Christendom, of European Christendom, and the cardinals and the people there are just as much threatened by anti-Christian violence as someone living in the Middle East or some other part of the world.
Speaker 1:And, of course, the conservative bishop said as much and he made a big deal After that speech where he was so vile about this is what's happening to our countries, this is what's happening to our church because of Islam, and it was just a very hard line. I was predicting which I do a terrible job predicting in these instances but I thought the next line was going to be that the terrorists were hardline Catholics. Yeah, I thought something like that would happen too, but it didn't. It didn't. They left it there as it was Muslim extremists.
Speaker 2:And so that part of the movie probably was another part that I thought that his speech was over the top.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I hope cardinals or not don't talk like that, and I do think there are plenty of people in the church who feel like the church is besieged, but I don't think it's Islam.
Speaker 1:Nobody. I'm sorry to interrupt you. Yeah, go ahead. I should not have interrupted you there, but I was just going to say nobody can rise to that level of power using that kind of rhetoric, not even I. Stop.
Speaker 2:Stop A little irony there, okay. All right Good point.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry to have interrupted you. Go ahead, Christy.
Speaker 2:I was just going to say that, yeah, it was so over the top that I did not for me. It like broke the spell of the movie.
Speaker 3:Interesting.
Speaker 1:Interesting yeah so.
Speaker 2:I do think there are hardliners in the Catholic Church. I don't think that is the issue that they are hardline about.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the only reason why I thought I didn't have exactly the same reaction is because it seemed to me that his character, even though he was Italian, was actually meant to represent Pope Benedict, who did get into trouble for making it. Now it was taken out of context, but in a speech he gave in Germany, a lecture, he did say something that was perceived as anti-Islamic.
Speaker 3:I don't think it was, but of course the soundbite sounded like like it was, and then the next thing that cardinal tedesco in the movie said was this is the result of relativism which of course was one of benedict's main he talked about the dictatorship of relativism that had corrupted civilization, and I don't know if the movie makers of the I think this is based on a novel yes, I haven't read.
Speaker 1:I should have mentioned that. A 2016 novel. Last name Harris. I forget his first name, yeah.
Speaker 3:And now, tedesco in Italian means German, so I was wondering if they chose that name, or he chose the novelist, or whoever chose that name and then had him give a speech that was a really very conservative speech, along the lines of something maybe Benedict would say if that was all connected there. So I don't know, I'm just speculating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the relativism. That sounded more real to me than the Islamic fear.
Speaker 1:So I totally missed the Benedict connection. But that makes sense. He was the embodiment, the representation of Benedict for the movie Interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I should say, in case people don't know, Benedict was German. That's what the Ginesco.
Speaker 1:And, in case you don't know, he was the Cardinal Ratzinger and did the very unusual thing of resigning his position. Popes don't resign, popes are popes till they're dead. But he resigned his position, breaking 700 years of tradition. Are we ready for the big reveal? Sure, I think so. All right, spoiler alert One more time, just to be careful. Spoiler alert, all right. So there's a big twist at the end, and so what we haven't said is that, but probably implied cardinal vincent benitez is elected the pope, and I thought that was the twist.
Speaker 3:It is a big twist.
Speaker 1:It is a big twist and I thought that was going to be over, that was going to be the end of the movie, and there's going to be this ray of sunshine, this person who is so humble we haven't really talked too much about Benitez, but you've mentioned just serving in the most difficult and tragic of places, under terrible conditions. He comes over, he's very humble, he reminds everybody what are we truly doing here as cardinals and electing a pope. And so he becomes the hero and he wins, he becomes pope. And then who wants to share the big reveal One more time?
Speaker 3:Spoiler alert.
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't know who should do that. So the big reveal is that he was born with women's ovaries and a uterus, yes, but raised a man and found out in his young adulthood that, yes, his yes, that yes yes, no clue that he had any female biology until very late in his life because of a surgery, and so up to that point, just no clue.
Speaker 1:So it had always been raised a man and so he's intersex. And this is the big reveal at the end, and I guess the previous pope did know and went on with it. So I don't know what are we supposed to take from it. I'm sure I wasn't the first person to think of it, although none of the critics, maybe because the critics were not doing the spoiler alert. But I was so proud of myself, even though you both said you had already thought of it too. But this is a Catholic crying game, right? You don't know until the big reveal at the very end, and it turns out this person is a different sex.
Speaker 3:But what are we to make of this? One thing is that it raises, first of all, I was wondering what the implications are for the ordination rules in the Catholic Church, because the only men can be ordained. And so now, of course, the question is what is a man? I know what is a woman. It's not so simple. Presumably. I looked up a little bit about the, perhaps the medical condition that Benitez had, and presumably he had XY chromosomes, but he had some kind of hormonal imbalance or whatever, or condition that resulted in a uterus in addition to his male reproductive organs. So what is he or what is she or they? And so the question is was he validly ordained in this case? Now, since this is a rare condition, a lot of people have been ordained Catholic priests. It's quite likely that maybe there are priests with this who have uteruses and don't even know it, maybe even a pope. I mentioned after the movie that there's a legend, a myth, of Pope Joan, who allegedly lived in the 9th century, who disguised herself as a man and became elected pope.
Speaker 1:You're saying that with a big old smile on your face. You relish in the myths, don't you?
Speaker 3:I love all these myths and urban legends and all, and it has been. I think almost every historian says there's not a shred of evidence for this that probably it was anti-Catholic or anti-papal propaganda. But I just wonder if that's also behind the movie too, something like that, that in that case there was a big reveal too. According to the legend she would have been it would have been Pope John, but later on they called her Pope John because apparently she gave birth during a papal procession, and that's how it came out.
Speaker 1:Literally this is not who we thought it was. If the first part of that that there was a female pope, that is a stretch. That the big reveal comes during a papal procession, it's probably an even bigger stretch.
Speaker 3:But I think it does raise issues about the ordination issue, because obviously that's one of the things that is a major concern and controversy within the Catholic Church and within the Orthodox churches too. We only ordain men, and now of course, this raises the possibility that there are intersex people, and if you can validly ordain intersex people, why not women? So I think that's part of what I got out of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I did see some Catholic commentary that suggested that this was a too easy way to end it, that because it was an exceedingly rare medical condition, would it have been different if it was somebody who had been raised a woman but had pulled off this? That that is a different, a woman or but had like pulled off this, that that is a different? And I actually thought being the intersex question actually made it more interesting only because I thought the whole commentary benito gave for why they didn't have their ovaries and uterus removed, that this is the way that god made me and so changing it'd be changing something that God ordained. I thought that was a—it does lead to thoughts, but I did think it was a nice way to explain her decision and maybe the former Pope's decision, for not revealing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think sometimes we do say this is so rare of course we don't even need to think about it. And yet I talked about this in my sex and gender class a couple semesters ago and it came up I touched on it briefly in my intro class that these lines we think so obviously in male-female, but these lines are blurry, right, and the fact that since 1968, the Olympic Games have changed have had like four different ways of determining whether you're male or female, and they all have complications, right. So they used to for a little while they just did flat out physical examinations and they called them nude parades, where women had to parade out to demonstrate that they were men. And then they went chromosomal tests and then a different chromosomal test and they realized that there were some complications, that there weren't just two simple little categories for chromosomes, and so there was some difficulties there. And now it's based on testosterone levels and it doesn't have anything to do whether you're male or female, it's. Are you really, are men's and women's categories in the olympics right? Do, whether you're male or female, really, our men's and women's categories in the Olympics right now? Are you high testosterone or low testosterone?
Speaker 1:Forget the name of the South African runner who is not allowed to participate in some of the races. No one's doubting she was born female. No one's doubting that she's never taken steroids, that this is all natural hyper andronism. I didn't pronounce that properly. Forgive me, but she has this condition where her testosterone is very high. It gives her a natural advantage, just like Michael Phelps Massive wingspan gives him a natural advantage, but she is not allowed to participate in many high-level athletic events because of this, and so that is just fascinating to me. This question of something that seems so simple whether you're male or female can get so complex when determining in stakes like this If you can run in the Olympics, if you can be the pope.
Speaker 2:I did think, like the woman boxer, this last Olympics, where there was all this controversy about she was allowed to participate. She was allowed to participate. She had been raised as a woman but had failed some maybe chromosome test, and so there was all this controversy about why is she being allowed to participate?
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you think this big reveal it just feels to me like the last five minutes of conversation is so different than the other things that we were talking about in terms of faith and doubt and political intrigue. Do you think the big reveal was something that was necessary, or did it add to the movie for you? Did it take away? Was it just neutral? What was your take on that?
Speaker 3:So, as I said earlier, I hadn't read the novel, but when I was reading, doing some research for this, apparently this reveal doesn't occur in the novel from what I've been reading. Oh really, If my source is correct, this was added by the writers of the movie.
Speaker 1:That's a big add.
Speaker 3:I think I can't I'd have to confirm that. But one of the critics or one of the articles I read about that claimed that at least in the novel it didn't appear. So then you begin to wonder what was going on in the minds, of why they thought that this was something that should be added to the novel.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is interesting. That seems to me. If you've got any conservative Catholics who enjoyed the book and all of a sudden they go to the movie and not knowing about this, that would be a massive surprise.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what I thought was interesting like so if you, everybody who had voted for this person to be Pope, did so apparently because they thought this person is demonstrating the values and the qualities that we want to look for in our next leader of the church, and so the reveal, in some ways, is that doesn't change just because that person is intersex. Those values and qualities are not different. Had it been somebody who had hidden their real sexuality or their real, then it does undermine those values that people thought this person had. So in some ways I don't know it was more confirming that Lawrence doesn't denounce this once he hears the story that he still sees this as legitimate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pope who had died did know about this and still ordained him a cardinal. Yes, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm just wondering if this happened in real life, how would the church respond? There's no clear—I looked in the catechism. I went to Aquinas to find out, and Aquinas says that if you don't have a nose, it would be illegal to be ordained a priest. It's contrary to church law Because, going back to what's in the Torah, the Old Testament law, about priests being undefiled and not having any physical deformities, he based it on that and he used the example of a priest who has lost their nose or doesn't have a nose, and so it wouldn't be of.
Speaker 3:And he makes a distinction between illegal and invalid ordination. An ordination of a woman would be invalid, meaning that she's not a priest. You can't, even if you want to. If a bishop wants to ordain a woman, it's not going to work. Wants to ordain a woman, it's not going to work. But in the case of someone who, let's say, is physically deformed, they would be. Or is the other example he gives us of a child right ordaining a boy? It would be a valid ordination, but contrary to church law, and so he would be a priest, but he wouldn't be able to legally practice the sacraments or to celebrate the sacraments. As I understand it, I did a very quick reading of Aquinas, but Aquinas gave me no guidance whatsoever on intersex.
Speaker 1:So are your rule books. Are that helping?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 3:If this were to happen, what would the church say? What would the canon lawyers say?
Speaker 1:And we're no closer. This movie brings us no closer to female priests, let alone female popes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the only kind of reference to that was one of the one of the factions within the Cardinals were like yeah, we, the liberal side, needs to win and we gotta, yeah, make sure that those, the more conservatives, don't get the next Pope or whatever, but that was the only.
Speaker 1:And that's a conversation for another day but the dearth of priests right now and how women are very often doing a significant amount of the priestly types of work without the formal title of priest. Is there anything we left out that we need to talk about?
Speaker 3:I'm sure we did, but we've got to end it sometime, all right.
Speaker 1:We will end that now, then. I want to thank you guys so much for coming and talking about it. First of all, thanks for coming out and watching the movie too. That was a fun evening and this was a fun conversation. Well, I think that wraps it up. I want to thank our audience for sitting around the table with us today. I hope that we have provided you with some food for thought and that we've given you something to chew on, but we aren't done yet. After we finish the music, we always have some leftovers for you to enjoy, additional thoughts we share with one another after we wrap up. So feel free to continue listening, and we appreciate your support, and, as part of that support, please consider subscribing, rating and reviewing Church Potluck wherever you are downloading it. And I didn't mention some other things. Next episode, we'll mention some other things that are going on behind the scenes with Church Potluck, until we gather around the table next time. This has been Church Potluck, and thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2:All right, I saw Michael Bailey this morning and he said he got a text from Lydia last night saying he had to go see Conclave.
Speaker 1:Is that right? And I said visually alone. You will enjoy it just for the visual aspect 100%, and you said that they're going to have to win for costumes. Yeah, unless there's some other movie.
Speaker 3:It's hard to imagine.
Speaker 1:But also, just, I don't know what the award is for, cinematography or visual or whatever it is, but it was stunning to me and you are so right that the umbrella scene. Did you notice in the umbrella scene that there was one person without an umbrella?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Yes, there was someone. I was about to say he was an older white guy that doesn't do much good does it. But yeah, one person and obviously that's intentional, right, all these beautiful umbrellas just circling, and there was that one person who didn't and I was like, no, you got to have an umbrella, but there was, for whatever reason, there was one guy without.
Speaker 2:Even the stuff like the ribbon covering the door with the seal, and that was very dramatic, especially when he breaks it.
Speaker 1:When I keep referring to it as a slow movie. How long did they take to show them putting a seal? But you saw all the detail that was being paid attention to right and every aspect of attention to that and I just I loved the slowness of it Because, like you said, it did build intrigue and build suspense. But then it gave this honor. It was almost like a sacred moment of showing that there's such a reverence for these traditions. I really did enjoy it. I thought the other thought I had in terms of visual, all this beauty and then the cardinals seem to be sitting at like really regular tables.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, the tables need an upgrade, yeah it seemed like 1950s and just regular flat, long tables, and so that part seemed to have taken away from the ambiance of the whole rest of the room.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I could never like figure out, like what is the order they're going in to drop in? Is it like based on who's been Cardinal longest the senior Cardinal? Yeah, I couldn't figure that out and I did not do research on that. Who's been cardinal longest the senior cardinal?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I couldn't figure that out and I did not do research on that Did Benitez vote last Because I assume he would be like the junior.
Speaker 2:Maybe he's a younger guy. Yeah, I don't know. I did do research on how many cardinals were Italian.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a joke. Yeah, I know how many cardinals 217 out of 266.
Speaker 2:Oh, not cardinals, Sorry. Popes have been from Italy.
Speaker 3:How many?
Speaker 2:217 out of 266.
Speaker 1:That was almost a given for many centuries, right that the pope would be Catholic. Usually they're Catholic, I think 267 out of 267 of the popes have been.
Speaker 3:Catholic. It is the sea of Rome, right, it's the bishop of Rome, so you would expect, normally you would get an Italian in that position. But also, it's not just the sea of Rome, it's the. He's the supreme pontiff of the church, so there's a sense in which it should be. We should draw from all, the, every, all Catholics should be eligible. All Cardinal or all Catholic bishops should be eligible to be the pope.
Speaker 1:Wasn't Benedict Ratzinger, wasn't he the first German pope?
Speaker 3:I'm trying to think Was he the first German?
Speaker 2:All right, this says that there were six Germans.
Speaker 3:Oh, I guess not.
Speaker 2:I thought he was the first as well, but this says no, there were others. Yeah, I remember growing up my my folks always saying there's never going to be a pope from the united states, just never going to happen, and I couldn't figure out why, like, why not?
Speaker 3:we're cool, not cool enough, that's right, apparently not what I've heard is that they don't want someone from any of the superpowers because it would give too much. There's always the fear that, wherever the pope is from, that their country or their government is going to influence them, and so it's okay having a pope from a less powerful country like Germany or Poland or Argentina, but not from the US. That's just too many people in the church would find that, like you've got, america has so much. Why do you need this?
Speaker 2:That's when you said the most powerful philosopher in the world might be JD Vance.
Speaker 3:I'm like huh.
Speaker 2:I wonder what is did Francis? What was? Was Francis a philosopher? Like, yeah, I Francis a philosopher, yeah. So I assume I don't know, yeah.
Speaker 3:I know John Paul had a doctorate in philosophy and in theology too.
Speaker 2:I assume Benedict did right.
Speaker 3:Benedict probably did too, but yeah, so now it depends upon who's more powerful the Pope or the Vice President of the US?
Speaker 1:You had mentioned Cardinal Lawrence's empathy and sympathy, even in the midst of his doubts, I thought the way that he told the African bishop that he would never be pope, that conversation showed just—it was very touching, very just, loaded with empathy and care and sympathy for the cardinal's position, but also being upfront with him about what this means, because of the scandal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was something that in some ways, it's just imagining being a cardinal and being involved in this. As you said before, I was involved in choosing a president for Perry College, but that's small potatoes compared to the Pope.
Speaker 1:Oh, hold your tongue, hold your tongue.
Speaker 3:If the Pope messes up, that's really bad. So you have to be really careful.
Speaker 1:You should have recommended that you write down your votes on pieces of paper that then you pierce with a string. That would have been really cool.
Speaker 2:And I do think it's good that they don't like so. Mike told us at lunch the other day that the vote for the president is always unanimous. Right For the president of the college. It is always unanimous right For the president of the college. It's a unanimous choice that everybody agrees. So I think it's good that we don't find out what the number of people were for voting for this guy to become pope either. This is who the selection is.
Speaker 1:I think that's. Oh, can you imagine?
Speaker 2:No, he barely got over it.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine what it would like to have a leader who only had a small majority and sometimes not a popular vote?
Speaker 3:majority, but just an electoral, could you?
Speaker 1:imagine such a situation. I cannot no.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think especially with the election of the Pope, when, if you really do believe, as many of us do, that there's divine action, going on that the Holy Spirit is moving the cardinals. You don't want to undermine that.
Speaker 2:Who was not moved by the Spirit? Yeah, who was not moved by the Spirit, exactly?
Speaker 1:I've got a story that I probably shouldn't tell, but anyway, I was visiting a church and they brought up someone who was talking about this passion to start a new church, and then the leaders of this church that was already in existence told the congregation so we want you to pray on this. But they said but we already have, we know how the Holy Spirit should be moving you. And it was very clear that they were saying that we have already determined what the right answer is here and I didn't feel very good about that. I'd be really curious and I'm sure somebody has written on this about what would it look like? How does God work through all the political and all the ambition, and how does God? What is the kind of the Catholic understanding of? Even though there's a lot of politicking going on, how does that fit in with the idea of that God's spirit is what is actually directing all of this? Because I think that would say something for all of us.
Speaker 2:I think I told you guys both as we were leaving the movie that it reminded me in some ways the way they talked about who should be Pope, of how we talk about who should be academic leaders that you don't want somebody who wants the job about who should be academic leaders that you don't want somebody who wants the job as far as a dean or a department chair because it reveals too much ambition.
Speaker 1:Isn't that funny that in order to be ambitious, you have to appear that you don't feel ambitious. It's a paradox. Maybe it's a mistake that I named my new LLC company Church Potluck Media.
Speaker 2:Empire, you should be more humble.
Speaker 3:Maybe a little too ambitious, maybe yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:Thank you all so much.
Speaker 3:Thanks, dave, that was fun yeah.