Stephen D'Agata

In a Facebook post last week, I mentioned that I finally got around to seeing the movie ‘Conclave’, and that I thoroughly enjoyed it and would do a more detailed review in my website blog. Well, this is it. Why I have titled the review ‘Mildly Biased’ is because of the similarities between the movie ‘Conclave’, and my novel ‘Pope Dreams – Pope Peter the Improbable’. I was alerted to these similarities by friends who, after seeing the movie, immediately had to contact me to let me know how much the political machinations in ‘Conclave’ resonated with the description of Church politics in my novel. Of course, you would all know this if you have read my novel. WHAT! YOU HAVEN’T. Well click on the links in my website and buy one. NOW!!!!

The concept of a Conclave to elect a Pope is that the Cardinals lock themselves in the Sistine Chapel and prayerfully ask the Holy Spirit to guide them towards selecting a candidate. The movie ‘Conclave’ based on the novel of the same name by Robert Harris, suggests that this is far from the truth. It presents the Cardinals as representatives of various Church factions from hard line conservate, to moderate, to liberal. This is indeed the way I describe the Cardinals in my novel.

For those who don’t believe that there are factional divisions within the Roman Catholic Church, just have a read through the Facebook comments about my recent Vatican II post. I certainly triggered the hard-line conservatives with that one. Those who believe that all people are sinful and we need to adhere to traditional, presumably pre-Vatican II, Catholic values to demonstrate our repentance to God, and others who extolled the glory of the Traditional Latin Mass. These commenters made it clear that those of us who hold more liberal views about our faith, were condemned to burn in the fires of hell.

I wonder if those who adhere to the Traditional Latin Mass as the only true form of worship, have ever thought how Latin became the lingua-franca of the Catholic Church in the first place. When Emperor Constantine became a Christian in the 4^th Century CE, Greek was the common language of the Church. So, it was natural that if Christianity was to become the state religion of the Roman Empire, scriptures should be translated to Latin. This allowed the word of God to be understood by people throughout the Empire. It is interesting that one of the main outcomes of Vatican II was the change to saying Mass in the vernacular, for precisely the same reason.

So yes, factionalism is alive and well in the Catholic Church. I know this firsthand from the way my fellow parishioners and I were treated by the Archdiocese of Melbourne in the 2000s when they tried to stifle our progressive proclivities. Of course, they didn’t overtly say that was what they were doing, it was just coincidental that they relocated our Parish Priest and decided not to renew the contract of our Pastoral Associate without consultation with the parishioners.

Back to the topic at hand. ‘Conclave’ is a great film which I think very accurately depicts the political machinations in the Roman Catholic Church and the fact that Cardinals are just ordinary men driven by power and control. Given that the film is in English and attracted the participation of some of the most famous English-speaking actors of our time, it perhaps comes across that the English-speaking Cardinals have more sway than they do. This is just a technicality reflecting Hollywood’s reluctance to release a movie that is heavily subtitled. The cultural diversity within the Church shone through though. The lengths that some Cardinals would go though to undermine their opponents, was to my mind, totally credible. The actions of the former Pope in appointing a leftfield candidate without the knowledge of the College of Cardinals, was less credible, but as plot lines in novels go, I will give that a pass because it creates a brilliant twist.

It was great to see Isabella Rossalini on screen again. She has a minor but pivotal role in the movie. Not unlike the pivotal role all women in the Church have without getting the recognition they deserve.

Regarding comparisons with my novel which, for the record, was circulating in draft form since 2011 long before Robert Harris’ novel was published, think of it as ‘Conclave’ with jokes. My novel is based on the premise: What if the holy spirit gets actively involved with a conclave for once? In my novel, the Cardinals all have dreams where they see the next Pope, and the man that they all see happens to be a married father of 6 living in Dublin Ireland who is about to have a vasectomy. This minor miracle in addition to the actions of some pesky doves, who may be responsible for the former Pope’s demise, leads to my protagonist, Peter MacDonald, being summoned to Rome by a group of liberal leaning Cardinals who manage to discover his identity. Apart from this supernatural element, I go out of my way to describe the Cardinals as ordinary men, with varied views on life and the future direction of the Catholic Church. Much in the same way as Robert Harris has done.

So, there you have it, not quite the comprehensive movie review you may have expected, but it has provided me with the opportunity to present my novel in context with the popular film. NOW! CLICK ON THE LINKS AND BUY MY BOOK!!! You know that you want to.