May 6, 2025 • 59 mins
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.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody, this episode of Church Potluck was
actually recorded way back inthe fall of 2024, so not quite a
year ago.
We did this when the movieConclave first came out and had
a great conversation about themovie, but life got busy and I
never actually published it outthere for you all to listen to
and it just sort of sat on mycomputer.
And then, when the Oscars cameout and Conclave was nominated,
(00:22):
I said, oh, what a greatopportunity to finally put this
out there.
And it didn't happen theneither.
And so now, with a Conclaveactually happening, with the
death of Pope Francis, this isone more opportunity, and so I
figure it's now or never.
So, finally, here is theepisode on the movie Conclave.
I hope you enjoy it.
Enjoy it.
(00:47):
Oh, I don't think this hashappened for you yet, christy,
but you, michael and MichaelBailey, you all are becoming
famous because of my podcast.
How, at least amongst my golfbuddies, 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 fromyour podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Right Word is getting out and that happened to
Michael Bailey Name-racking.
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Who knows where the ceiling is for you here?
Right, yeah, and I'm sure thatwill happen for you eventually,
eventually.
So Welcome everyone, toeveryone, to Church Potluck,
where we are serving up asmorgasbord of Christian
curiosity.
I'm your host, dale McConkie,sociology professor and United
Methodist pastor, and there aretwo keys to a good Church
(01:34):
Potluck plenty of variety andengaging conversation.
And this is exactly what we aretrying to do here on Church
Potluck sitting down withfriends and sharing our ideas on
a variety of topics from avariety of academic disciplines
and a variety of Christiantraditions.
Welcome back everybody.
It's good to see you guys.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Glad to be here.
Yeah, it's good to have you.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
This is only our second recording of the semester
and you were not on the firstone, 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 lotsgoing on.
I'll give you a choice.
You can comment on either oneof those, either one of them,
okay.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
I guess I can comment on the Barry president.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
We're very happy, which makes sense because you
were on the search committee forthat.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
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 Ithink he's really going to do a
great job here at Baylor, soI'm looking forward to working
with him.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
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 theelection.
No, you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I would just say that one of the things I like to do
at election time is to see whatwere the undergrad degrees of
the people who the presidentchooses for their cabinet, and I
have not worked that out yet.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Just to see if there's some humanities, people
in there, yeah, yeah, just tosee if there's some humanities
people in there.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Our vice president-elect was a philosophy
and political science major at.
Ohio State.
So he's the most powerfulphilosophy major in the world
there you go.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
I like that and my parents being from my mom being
from Ann Arbor and my dad goingto University of Michigan, I
guess the Ohio State part justcancels the rest of that Well.
Anyway, it's good to be here.
We've already introduced youtwo, but let's go ahead and do
it more formally.
Let's welcome back ChristySnyder.
I was waiting for the applause.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
The audience was a little delayed there.
Yeah, glad to be here.
I am a historian at BerryCollege and I am also a Catholic
.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Which is very important for today's
conversations, and also ourCatholic expert, michael
Papazian.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Thank you, it's good to be back again.
I call myself Catholic adjacent.
I like that.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
We have a lot in common, so I need a laugh button
.
I don't have a laugh button.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
No, no, that wasn't that funny.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
That's why we need the button.
Oh, I see.
Anyway, what are we going totalk about today?
I think we need to have somemusic for that as well.
I love this music.
This is my favorite.
This is my favorite, JesusChrist movie star Sure, do we
(04:34):
believe?
What movies say you are?
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Jesus Christ movie star.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
All right, so this might be a bit of a stretch,
because Jesus is not really themovie 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 aboutthe movie Conclave, a
suspenseful, mystery-soaked,intrigue-filled, dramatic,
(05:00):
political, religious thrillercalled Conclave.
What'd y'all think?
We'll just get just a thumbs up, thumbs down part of it first.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
So I really enjoyed it and I thought it was.
I didn't think it would be athriller, so it's not a thriller
like James Bond or whatever,but it definitely it's the
slowest thriller in all of humanhistory in a good way.
Yes, and so it definitely hadme interested in what was going
to happen the whole time thatI'm watching it.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Absolutely, I agree.
Thumbs up, thumbs up.
It was a great movie, I reallyenjoyed it and it was really
just gripping.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And it's getting very good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
and everywhere else that I cansee.
Actually, we should mentionthat the three of us all watched
it together.
That's right, it was fun.
Just a little side note beforewe get into the movie.
Was that something unique foryou?
I hardly ever go to thetheaters these days.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, I did go with one of our other colleagues and
saw Wolverine versus who was heversus Deadpool or something?
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
And so totally different.
But sometimes it is nice to bein a theater again to watch.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
It was, and I think there were things about this
movie that made it nice to seeit on the big screen.
One of the things that Inoticed was just how visually
stunning it was, and I've readsome over some reviews and they
really haven't mentioned thattoo much.
But it for it wasn't filmed inthe Vatican, but they found some
very Vatican-like places torecord on.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
They were in the.
I guess the pseudo or thevirtual.
Sistine Chapel, but it lookedlike they were there, but they
weren't.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
I have no idea how they did that and it wasn't AI.
No, I don't think so, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
And just the way how the cardinals were dressed and
during the one scene with theumbrellas, the red and the white
.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
it was just really stunning.
I thought, yeah, I thought justthe visually it was stunning
and actually part of it it's gotto win Oscar for costume design
.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
I think you would hope and I guess this is a good
time to mention that we aregoing to have spoilers
throughout.
We're going to go ahead andjust talk about the movie, and
so if you don't want to listento this until after you've
watched the movie, please go dothat.
And there's also one bigspoiler that we won't talk about
until the very end of thepodcast, but when we do get to
that, we will make sure we letyou know about the spoiler,
because we'll play this Spoileralert, because we'll play this
(07:22):
Spoiler alert, all right.
So when you hear this Spoileralert, just realize that we're
going to do a big reveal at theend of the episode, so you might
want to turn it off at thattime.
So, yeah, just so much thoughtinto something, just like
walking down a hallway, just thegrandiosity that it felt, the
artwork surrounding it justreally for me, just brought me
(07:46):
into the movie in a way that Idon't always notice visual
effects and things, but that wasvery striking to me.
Christy, you are our one andonly Catholic, not
Catholic-adjacent person on thepanel today.
Just as someone who is Catholic, what were your thoughts going
through watching it as someoneof the Catholic faith?
Speaker 2 (08:08):
So I was.
So some of the things thatreally struck me was, right at
the very beginning, thetreatment of the Pope who had
just passed away, and how itbrought like all the people, I
assume, who are in the Vaticanhierarchy together.
So that was interesting.
(08:29):
And then how quickly thoughtsturned to we need to now choose
somebody new.
There's going to be thiselection.
That has to happen.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yes, and hence the term conclave, the title, so
Michael or Christy.
Just let's give some contextfor people who may not be
familiar with that term and whathappens when a pope dies.
What is a conclave?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Literally, it means they're locked up, there's a key
in there, yeah, and they'resequestered, basically until
they elect a pope.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
So these are all the bishop cardinals all the
cardinals from all over theglobe.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Yeah, let me just say I think that was also one of
the things that impressed me bythe portrayal that on one level,
when you look at all thecardinals in their vestments,
you've got a really and alsojust the people really a good
idea of the whole the diversityof the Catholic Church.
Geographically, ethnically,every nation in the world is
(09:30):
represented and of course,catholic means universal.
So that embodied that On onelevel it's diverse.
On the other, they're all oldmen.
So it's an interestingjuxtaposition where you got all
that.
And as an Eastern Christian, Iespecially appreciated that we
saw some of the Easterncardinals.
So they're Eastern Catholicchurches and some of the Eastern
(09:51):
Catholic churches havecardinals, and in the depiction
in the movie where you couldnotice that some of them were
not wearing the traditionalLatin cardinal vestments but
were wearing, I think, syriac orCoptic, I wasn't quite sure.
So it also represented thediversity of languages and
cultures in the church.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
There was so much of that I said I know I'm missing
stuff here.
I know that I'm notunderstanding why they're purple
and they're red.
There's so much going on that Ido want to go back and just
have the theater to myself so Ican 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
(10:31):
sequestered and stayingsequestered until they have
elected a new pope.
It is a very democratic process, but it's also a democratic
process that is just steeped incenturies and centuries of
tradition, and that was, I think, again beautifully portrayed.
I had forgotten about theneedle going through the votes
(10:52):
as a way of knowing that theywere counted.
And then I did know about theblack smoke and the white smoke,
the black smoke meaningunsuccessful vote, we don't have
a pope yet, and then that's theburning of the ballots.
But then you burn the ballot,put a little different color ash
in there and all of a suddenyou've got white smoke saying we
have our card, have our pope.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
So I am not a church historian, but I was very
interested in where did thisprocess come from?
And so apparently it is aprocess from around the 12, oh
wait, 1059, the 12, oh wait,1059, oh no, 12, I'm sorry.
(11:31):
1268 is when the first conclavehappened, and the problem was
they couldn't choose, theycouldn't agree on who would be
Pope, and so there's like threeyears where they don't have a
Pope, a sitting Pope, andfinally they get them together
again, they lock them in thisroom.
They still can't come to adecision, and so, supposedly,
the people of Rome tore the roofoff of where they were meeting
(11:51):
so they would be subject to theweather and only fed them water
and bread until they finallycame up with okay, here's your
Pope.
Came up with okay, here's yourpope.
But it was also a way to get itout of having influence from
secular leaders, whether it beByzantine emperors or other
(12:13):
emperors.
So I found that veryinteresting that there is this
long kind of historicalreasoning for why they do it the
way they do it.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Very cool and I want to get into the intrigue and the
political aspects of this movie.
But first I need your help inidentifying the characters.
I am terrible.
I know the actors sometimes andsometimes I don't, but
especially the names, and so I'mgoing to give you the name.
We're going to have a game showhere.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
I am bad at this too, yeah name.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
We're gonna actually we're gonna we're gonna have a
game show here.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
I already see michael lapazian looking at my notes
over here.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
So I'm not cheating, all right, and I didn't come.
Who's that actor?
We'll, we'll just do it thatway.
Who's that actor?
So I'm gonna give you one, I'mgonna give you the name, and
then you got buzzers there.
Michael, give, show us whatyour buzzer sounds like, all
right.
And christy, what is yourbuzzer?
All right, show us what yourbuzzer sounds like, all right.
And Christy, what is yourbuzzer?
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 andyou tell me who the character is
(13:12):
, or I can give you thecharacter and then give you the
actor.
Which one do you prefer?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Character.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Okay, yeah, okay, here's one, cardinal Bellini.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Yes, stanley Tucci.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah, good job, good job.
But if you hesitated like thaton that one and Chris, you
didn't even try.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
This may not be a good game show.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
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 anensemble cast, but at the core
is Cardinal Lawrence, played by.
Ralph Fiennes Is that right,actually I don't have my boo bud
(14:00):
, but no, you're very close, notRalph Fiennes.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Ralph, ralph, ralph.
Yeah, I thought he pronouncedit Rafe, but I could be wrong,
oh that could be too, and Ithought it was Finney's.
It doesn't matter, I thought itwas.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Finney's Christy gets it.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
No, that's fine.
This is like Jeopardy.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Who is Ralph Fiennes English List?
I did not even know that he wasVoldemort.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Yeah, that's a great actor.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
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 (14:29):
No.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
That is just recommend.
It's a disturbing movie but Iencourage you to watch that
sometime.
But anyway, and my son and Iboth like the Grand Budapest
Hotel, we watched that together.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
So many things that he's involved in, so we might
just go, rather than goingthrough the rest of these, which
I'm afraid.
Oh, here I'll give you a niceSister, Agnes Isabella
Rossellini.
Yeah, yeah, she might win anOscar for that, they're saying.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Oh really.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Is that right?
Apparently?
Speaker 3 (14:58):
yeah, that's what I just read this morning in my
research All right.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I wasn't going to go there this fast, but why, I
don't know.
Okay, because I don't want tosay that she was not, and so I
want to be careful that shewasn't shoehorned in there.
But this is not a movie thatwould pass the Bechdel test.
No, oh no, not at all Becauseyou have to have more than one
woman in the movie to have aconversation and there are.
I'm over-exaggerating, but thisis very much, as you have
(15:23):
already said, michael, a movieabout older men who are the ones
in charge, but Sister Agnesdoes play a pivotal role in that
.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
At least yeah in a couple of scenes.
But I think one scene is whereshe probably has the strongest
presence of yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
What did you remember about that scene?
Speaker 2 (15:41):
So that is a scene where she is just commenting on
how the nuns are not allowed tohave a say in the selection of
the new leader, but they do haveopinions about how things
should work and when things arebeing done incorrectly, men
(16:05):
should be called to account,whether they are priests or
cardinals or not.
And yeah, I would say that'sprobably the part that she might
be the reason why she's not.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Her little monologue there was powerful and speaking
for the people and a statementfor today as well, I'm assuming,
not just, and actually themovie is set in relatively
contemporary I don't know theexact timeline, but it's set in
contemporary times.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah, they all had cell phones which they could not
bring in with them and thingslike that.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah, one of the sources I was reading said that
it was pretty obvious that thePope that passed away was
supposed to be Francis.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
So, I'm assuming this is like future, near future
perhaps what were the themesthat you thought came through in
the movie?
We start off talking about thepolitical intrigue and the
voting process and all thesequestering.
Do you think it was acoincidence that this was
released in late October, rightbefore the elections?
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I thought there would be more kind of American
politics references, or at leastmore overt ones.
I didn't pick up on that many,but Christy you might have.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
You're shaking your head.
No, Christy, no I didn't reallysee the political election
connection the same way.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
When something at the very beginning of the movie,
when they start talking about weneed an election, I said, oh my
goodness, this is going to be amoral tale for us today, a
morality tale for Americanpolitics today, and I agree that
very quickly it slipped intojust it was all about who's the
next pope going to be, and I didnot picture overt messages
(17:36):
about American politics, but wesaw a lot of American style
politics going on in the voteand I think that's one of the
points to be made that here arepeople who are supposed to be
serving God, supposed to bedoing this very humbly, seeking
the Holy Spirit's direction onwho is pope.
But you see a tremendous amountof political factioning and a
(17:59):
lot of behind-the-sceneswrangling, a lot of closed-door
deals.
I guess it's always closed-door.
So what did youall think aboutthat?
Any further thoughts on?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
that On it being closed door or American
connected to politics in general.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
No, just the way that they portrayed the political
side and the ambitious side ofthese.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Yeah, I don't know what cardinals do when they're
locked in together, but fromwhat I've read, these are
extremely ambitious men andwhile you're not supposed to let
on that, you want to be pope.
Everyone wants to be pope.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
And that came out right.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Everyone was trying to act like they didn't want it,
but you want it.
It was very.
I did think, and I do thinkthere's probably a couple of
ideological factions within the.
Catholic Church, definitelyrepresented by the current Pope
Francis as well as the formerPope Benedict and I thought that
came out fairly well andreferences to maybe other
(19:00):
factions as well, although notas strong.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
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 reformor an agent of going back, and I
thought that was done very well.
But it was also regionalaspects right.
Are we really going to have anAfrican Pope?
I remember when I first washere at Barry I think this was
(19:26):
right around the time that PopeFrancis was named as the pope
there was a lot of speculation Iforget which cardinal it was,
but that perhaps the CatholicChurch would have its first
African pope.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yeah, there's a Cardinal Serra who is I believe
is he from Ghana, I think one ofthe West African countries
who's often named as a potentialpope.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
And so the Italians, oh yeah, the Italians.
I forget his name, but it wasvery much set up as the
reactionary conservative thatwas Cardinal Tedesco.
Yes, yes, there you go.
I don't know the actor's name.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
He has a long Italian name, but I don't remember it.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
No me either.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Although he was also from the critics, I read they
thought he did a really good job.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
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 castingwas wonderful.
Again, this is not my strength,but I really enjoyed the
casting.
I like Stanley Tucci inanything.
The one that didn't ring withme, quite true, was John Lithgow
(20:28):
.
I just still saw him as thealien from Third Rock in the Sun
and I know he's done so manyother things and he's a serious
actor, but I always saw him asthe actor rather than as his
character, for whatever reason.
That had trouble.
That's the only person I hadtrouble with.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Yeah, for whatever reason, he didn't sound like a
cardinal to me, so I don't know.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And I thought the Wait.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Oh, I'm sorry, oh, go ahead.
Was he American in the movieCanadian Canadian?
So maybe that's the reason that.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yeah, of course You've got to To be a cardinal
and his way of trying to obtainthe papacy was.
It did not strike me aslegitimate as some of the others
that were being talked about.
(21:16):
Very underhanded, yeah, veryunderhanded this idea that even
after he's supposedly beendismissed by the previous pope,
he's not going to admit that.
And yeah, that part just didnot strike me as being as
realistic, maybe.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
And he flies someone in to be part of a scandal, to
expose the scandal, and that'sone of those things that if you
get found out, of course thatwould just destroy your
reputation.
So that was harder to suspend.
Disbelief on that perhaps.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Yeah, I may have a more negative view of human
nature.
I actually think something likethat may happen.
I don't know.
People do all sorts of deviousand underhanded things that seem
incomprehensible, but inpolitics and in the church,
things happen.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
This has no relation to the selection of our current
president for Barry right.
Oh, no, okay, I just want tomake sure.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
No, I'm just saying.
I said these things do happen.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Not in academic politics.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Okay, there you go, never in academic politics.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Okay, there you go.
Never in academic politics.
Another big theme in the movieis that of faith and doubt, and
the more progressive wing of theCatholic Church, and especially
the Phineas character.
Cardinal Lawrence, who is theone presiding over the conclave,
gives a speech and just reallycomes out saying how doubt is
(22:43):
very important to faith, and heactually concludes his monologue
for me a very powerfulmonologue he concludes it with
may God grant us a pope whodoubts.
And I was curious about whatyou thought about that monologue
or if you had any other furtherthoughts.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
I've got further thoughts on it, but yeah, I
thought his character was themost moving character.
So here's somebody who hadasked to be released from his
position.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
He had asked.
Yeah, he had asked.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
The former pope did not want to release him because
he was doubting his faith andquestioning his faith, and yet
many times within the movie whenother people needed comforting,
he prayed with them.
He tried to help them in theirkind of faith beliefs, and so I
(23:34):
thought that was a really welldone part of the film.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Yeah, I guess to many peopleit's shocking to say that a pope
who doubts or a clergyman whobut I think it's pretty common I
hear all the time about peoplewho are even in, who are
committed to the church, whohave doubts all the time.
Yes, I can't imagine someone offaith not having doubts maybe
(24:00):
not all the time, every now andthen.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I think that's why his character was so compelling,
was because there was anearnestness, right, and he said
I wish I had it written down andI forgot to put it in my notes
here.
But he said certainty is theenemy of faith, that if you have
certainty then you don'tquestion, you don't have that
wonder and you don't have thatawe.
And so having doubts allowsthat opening for mystery.
(24:26):
And I found that to be a verywonderful speech and the only
thing I was critiquing it in mypastorally role and just also in
my professional life thatsometimes we use doubt and it
might be just semantics, butdoubt seems to imply a negative
view of your faith.
Right, that you're a dismissiveview of your faith.
(24:48):
But if you put in the wordquestioning, or if you put in
the word wondering, or if youput in the word church, potluck,
curiosity, right that you'reopen to a diversity of
understandings that are beyondhow you understand God.
I think that makes it for mevery compelling, beyond how you
understand God.
I think that makes it for mevery compelling, and doubt might
be one aspect of that.
But I don't know if I'mchanging the message that was
(25:10):
trying to come across in themovie or not.
So you're nodding but nottalking.
This is.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
We're doubting and questioning.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
So you're doubting my response there.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
One issue, from a Catholic perspective, of course,
is that you've got all thesedogmas that you're not supposed
to doubt, you're not supposed toquestion.
So there may be certain thingsthat come up for questioning,
but the central dogmas of thechurch are supposed to be
accepted without question.
That's a good point.
And so there is that tension.
You can see why thetraditionalists would be made
(25:41):
very nervous by a pope whodoubts what is he going to doubt
next?
Is he going to doubt theresurrection?
Is he going to doubt thesacraments, the Eucharist, that
it's the real presence.
So there's that danger thatwhen you begin doubting certain
things, that's going to lead toother doubting things that maybe
(26:02):
, from a Catholic perspective,should not be doubted.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
That's a great point because on the other end of the
spectrum in terms of Lurgy, butour fundamentalist Christians I
have often heard growing up andstudying various perspectives
very often you'll hearfundamentalists say if you doubt
this, then it will lead todoubting that, it will lead to
doubting this and it will allcome crashing down.
So if you don't hold on to ourbeliefs in total, if you don't
(26:29):
believe every single thing inthe Bible, it would be the
fundamentalist thing.
If you don't believe everysingle thing, then if you
question this, why don't youquestion that?
And it all comes down, which Ithink is a false argument.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
And I do think there was a you saw this with his
character in the movie a fear ofnot wanting to be a hypocrite
either, so that he really pushesoff any suggestion that he
should be Pope.
I think because he realizesthat by having that doubt it
would just be illegitimate forhim to serve in that role until
(27:03):
towards the end, where he's likeconvinced that maybe I should
do this yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Actually being called .
Come on, everybody wants to bePope.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Come on Admit it.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
So we haven't talked about one of the characters in
the movie and for a while youdon't understand why this person
is there.
I was wondering.
I was very curious where theywere going with this right, and
let's see what is his name.
Is it Benitez?
Yes, cardinal Benitez, who is acardinal who nobody else knows
about because he was fairlyrecently credentialized as a
(27:38):
cardinal by the pope, who is nowdead, and I forget exactly why
nobody knows it's in Latin, inthe chest or in the heart.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
So the Pope can name cardinals and not reveal that
they're cardinals.
And, from what I've read, insome cases the Pope may not even
tell the cardinal who was namedthat they're cardinals.
But it is done.
I think we know that Pope JohnPaul II named at least four in
(28:08):
pectore cardinals during hispapacy, mostly Eastern European
ones who were under Sovietdomination.
The reason why it's done is sothat you can have a cardinal in
a particular region and notexpose them to persecution.
I think it's also done in China, where the Catholic Church is
(28:28):
severely repressed by thecommunist regime.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Although I did read as well that if it is not
revealed at some point beforethe Pope who has made this
cardinal, it doesn't count afterhe dies.
So the fact that yeah, so thatwas like a breaking of church
doctrine, that they'd berecognized after the pope had
passed away.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Oh, so there was one blooper in the movie?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yes, at least one, at least one.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah, thank you.
I'm going to enjoy my ownpodcast because I had missed
that.
I heard the in pectore, but Idid not.
I just thought that man lostpaperwork.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah, that's the bureaucratic error, I assume,
because he had been named theArchbishop of Kabul in
Afghanistan, where of coursethere are very few Catholics.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Very few Catholics.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Although there was a.
This might have been areference to the fact that
recently, pope Francis named acardinal in Mongolia, which only
has about 1,000 Catholics inthe entire country, and so maybe
I don't know if that was aninspiration in the movie, but
the idea is in a country likeAfghanistan, you probably
(29:32):
wouldn't want to be recognizedas the leader of the Catholic
church, but rather just remainincognito or under the radar,
and yet he was named a cardinal.
The fact that he was named acardinal is what's quite
extraordinary, because usuallyyou think about cardinals being
the archbishops of big citieslike New York as a cardinal and
Los Angeles.
You don't think of these small,out-of-the-way places like
(29:55):
Kabul and Mongolia, which don'thave substantial Catholic
populations, as having acardinal.
Very interesting.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
That was actually very helpful.
Something that I had troublesuspending my disbelief in was
the fact that this up to thatmoment unknown cardinal would
actually receive votes on thevery first ballot right.
So the movie shows all the bigname cardinals, all the major
political players gettingroughly even amounts, but nobody
(30:26):
getting anywhere near the twothirds majority needed to become
the pope.
But this guy gets like fivevotes on the first and nobody
knew him.
And so what do you think wasgoing on there?
I actually asked my good friendChatGPT about this and got some
answers.
But, did you have any problemwith that, or I thought that was
a little unusual.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
I thought it was odd, because you kept us guessing
who was supporting him yeah, whowas his friend or whatever and
why were they supporting him?
And maybe they just put that inas just like a teaser,
something for us to talk aboutin the podcast, it made it clear
that this person would play arole later on.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
That's true, yeah, so maybe that had something to do
with it.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
And I thought, I don't know, I thought maybe it
was that, yeah, they had beenserving in this dangerous
position and hadn't they comefrom 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 knowlike you must be a great
Catholic if you have done thesejobs, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
And that's what I uncovered, or at least got
gleaned from my research.
The other possible thing isthat was a negative vote.
I don't want any of these powerbrokers, so I'm going to vote
for the person least likely tobe able to become Pope type of a
thing broker so I'm going tovote for the person least likely
to be able to become Pope typeof a thing.
Before we start getting intothe deeper issues, here the big
(31:51):
spoiler what do you think wasthe purpose of the explosion?
Was that just to add some drama?
Or did we need to have thatexplosion to have the speech
that came after the explosionthat led up to that?
I was trying to think what thepurpose behind that was.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
It was dramatic.
Yeah, it was dramatic yeah.
And artistic yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
So before we got the speech, I thought that it was
actually like a signal toLawrence, who had just voted for
himself, that this is Godsaying no, you should not be
pope.
So that's how I took it.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
And I think you're probably right.
So I'm asking a very sillyquestion what does the voice of
God mean in this context?
Yeah, because it happened at avery dramatic moment.
I think that's actuallyprobably a very profound thing
that I was dismissing.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
I think God did appear later, right, because
when Benitez was elected rightbefore I think he was elected
wasn't there a wind that youheard through the windows of the
Sistine Chapel?
Of course that's a reference tothe Holy Spirit.
Because Catholics believe thatit's not really the cardinals
who are choosing the Pope, butthe Holy Spirit is moving them,
(32:59):
so their choice is guided by God.
So really, the Pope is chosenby God.
So the movie did make areference to that.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
I think yes absolutely.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
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 senseof the church in Europe being
besieged, almost so.
It gave the sense of the churchin Europe being besieged,
almost that.
Here we are in Rome, the centerof Christendom, of European
(33:30):
Christendom, and the cardinalsand the people there are just as
much threatened byanti-Christian violence as
someone living in the MiddleEast or some other part of the
world.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
And, of course, the conservative bishop said as much
and he made a big deal Afterthat speech where he was so vile
about this is what's happeningto our countries, this is what's
happening to our church becauseof Islam, and it was just a
very hard line.
I was predicting which I do aterrible job predicting in these
instances but I thought thenext line was going to be that
(34:05):
the terrorists were hardlineCatholics.
Yeah, I thought something likethat would happen too, but it
didn't.
It didn't.
They left it there as it wasMuslim extremists.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
And so that part of the movie probably was another
part that I thought that hisspeech was over the top.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
And I hope cardinals or not don't talk like that, and
I do think there are plenty ofpeople in the church who feel
like the church is besieged, butI don't think it's Islam.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Nobody.
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Yeah, go ahead.
I should not have interruptedyou there, but I was just going
to say nobody can rise to thatlevel of power using that kind
of rhetoric, not even I.
Stop.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Stop A little irony there, okay.
All right Good point.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
I'm sorry to have interrupted you.
Go ahead, Christy.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
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 themovie.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Interesting yeah so.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
I do think there are hardliners in the Catholic
Church.
I don't think that is the issuethat they are hardline about.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Yeah, the only reason why I thought I didn't have
exactly the same reaction isbecause it seemed to me that his
character, even though he wasItalian, was actually meant to
represent Pope Benedict, who didget into trouble for making it.
Now it was taken out of context, but in a speech he gave in
Germany, a lecture, he did saysomething that was perceived as
(35:36):
anti-Islamic.
I don't think it was, but ofcourse the soundbite sounded
like like it was, and then thenext thing that cardinal tedesco
in the movie said was this isthe result of relativism which
of course was one of benedict'smain he talked about the
dictatorship of relativism thathad corrupted civilization, and
(35:59):
I don't know if the movie makersof the I think this is based on
a novel yes, I haven't read.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
I should have mentioned that.
A 2016 novel.
Last name Harris.
I forget his first name, yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
And now, tedesco in Italian means German, so I was
wondering if they chose thatname, or he chose the novelist,
or whoever chose that name andthen had him give a speech that
was a really very conservativespeech, along the lines of
something maybe Benedict wouldsay if that was all connected
(36:28):
there.
So I don't know, I'm justspeculating.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah, the relativism.
That sounded more real to methan the Islamic fear.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
So I totally missed the Benedict connection.
But that makes sense.
He was the embodiment, therepresentation of Benedict for
the movie Interesting.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Yeah, I should say, in case people don't know,
Benedict was German.
That's what the Ginesco.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
And, in case you don't know, he was the Cardinal
Ratzinger and did the veryunusual thing of resigning his
position.
Popes don't resign, popes arepopes 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.
(37:14):
All right, spoiler alert Onemore time, just to be careful.
Spoiler alert, all right.
So there's a big twist at theend, and so what we haven't said
is that, but probably impliedcardinal vincent benitez is
elected the pope, and I thoughtthat was the twist.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
It is a big twist.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
It is a big twist and I thought that was going to be
over, that was going to be theend of the movie, and there's
going to be this ray of sunshine, this person who is so humble
we haven't really talked toomuch about Benitez, but you've
mentioned just serving in themost difficult and tragic of
places, under terribleconditions.
He comes over, he's very humble, he reminds everybody what are
we truly doing here as cardinalsand electing a pope.
(37:59):
And so he becomes the hero andhe wins, he becomes pope.
And then who wants to share thebig reveal One more time?
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Spoiler alert.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Oh, I don't know who should do that.
So the big reveal is that hewas born with women's ovaries
and a uterus, yes, but raised aman and found out in his young
adulthood that, yes, his yes,that yes yes, no clue that he
(38:41):
had any female biology untilvery late in his life because of
a surgery, and so up to thatpoint, just no clue.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
So it had always been raised a man and so he's
intersex.
And this is the big reveal atthe end, and I guess the
previous pope did know and wenton with it.
So I don't know what are wesupposed to take from it.
I'm sure I wasn't the firstperson to think of it, although
none of the critics, maybebecause the critics were not
doing the spoiler alert.
But I was so proud of myself,even though you both said you
(39:07):
had already thought of it too.
But this is a Catholic cryinggame, right?
You don't know until the bigreveal at the very end, and it
turns out this person is adifferent sex.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
But what are we to make of this?
One thing is that it raises,first of all, I was wondering
what the implications are forthe ordination rules in the
Catholic Church, because theonly men can be ordained.
And so now, of course, thequestion is what is a man?
I know what is a woman.
It's not so simple.
Presumably.
I looked up a little bit aboutthe, perhaps the medical
condition that Benitez had, andpresumably he had XY chromosomes
(39:44):
, but he had some kind ofhormonal imbalance or whatever,
or condition that resulted in auterus in addition to his male
reproductive organs.
So what is he or what is she orthey?
And so the question is was hevalidly ordained in this case?
(40:06):
Now, since this is a rarecondition, a lot of people have
been ordained Catholic priests.
It's quite likely that maybethere are priests with this who
have uteruses and don't evenknow it, maybe even a pope.
I mentioned after the moviethat there's a legend, a myth,
of Pope Joan, who allegedlylived in the 9th century, who
(40:29):
disguised herself as a man andbecame elected pope.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
You're saying that with a big old smile on your
face.
You relish in the myths, don'tyou?
Speaker 3 (40:37):
I love all these myths and urban legends and all,
and it has been.
I think almost every historiansays there's not a shred of
evidence for this that probablyit was anti-Catholic or
anti-papal propaganda.
But I just wonder if that'salso behind the movie too,
something like that, that inthat case there was a big reveal
(40:59):
too.
According to the legend shewould have been it would have
been Pope John, but later onthey called her Pope John
because apparently she gavebirth during a papal procession,
and that's how it came out.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Literally this is not who we thought it was.
If the first part of that thatthere was a female pope, that is
a stretch.
That the big reveal comesduring a papal procession, it's
probably an even bigger stretch.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
But I think it does raise issues about the
ordination issue, becauseobviously that's one of the
things that is a major concernand controversy within the
Catholic Church and within theOrthodox churches too.
We only ordain men, and now ofcourse, this raises the
possibility that there areintersex people, and if you can
validly ordain intersex people,why not women?
(41:48):
So I think that's part of whatI got out of that.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Yeah, yeah, I did see some Catholic commentary that
suggested that this was a tooeasy way to end it, that because
it was an exceedingly raremedical condition, would it have
been different if it wassomebody who had been raised a
(42:13):
woman but had pulled off this?
That that is a different, awoman or but had like pulled off
this, that that is a different?
And I actually thought beingthe intersex question actually
made it more interesting onlybecause I thought the whole
commentary benito gave for whythey didn't have their ovaries
and uterus removed, that this isthe way that god made me and so
(42:36):
changing it'd be changingsomething that God ordained.
I thought that was a—it doeslead to thoughts, but I did
think it was a nice way toexplain her decision and maybe
the former Pope's decision, fornot revealing it.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah, and I think sometimes we do say this is so
rare of course we don't evenneed to think about it.
And yet I talked about this inmy sex and gender class a couple
semesters ago and it came up Itouched on it briefly in my
intro class that these lines wethink so obviously in
male-female, but these lines areblurry, right, and the fact
(43:16):
that since 1968, the OlympicGames have changed have had like
four different ways ofdetermining whether you're male
or female, and they all havecomplications, right.
So they used to for a littlewhile they just did flat out
physical examinations and theycalled them nude parades, where
women had to parade out todemonstrate that they were men.
(43:38):
And then they went chromosomaltests and then a different
chromosomal test and theyrealized that there were some
complications, that thereweren't just two simple little
categories for chromosomes, andso there was some difficulties
there.
And now it's based ontestosterone levels and it
doesn't have anything to dowhether you're male or female,
it's.
Are you really, are men's andwomen's categories in the
olympics right?
Do, whether you're male orfemale, really, our men's and
women's categories in theOlympics right now?
(43:59):
Are you high testosterone orlow testosterone?
Forget the name of the SouthAfrican runner who is not
allowed to participate in someof the races.
No one's doubting she was bornfemale.
No one's doubting that she'snever taken steroids, that this
is all natural hyper andronism.
I didn't pronounce thatproperly.
Forgive me, but she has thiscondition where her testosterone
(44:20):
is very high.
It gives her a naturaladvantage, just like Michael
Phelps Massive wingspan giveshim a natural advantage, but she
is not allowed to participatein many high-level athletic
events because of this, and sothat is just fascinating to me.
This question of something thatseems so simple whether you're
male or female can get socomplex when determining in
(44:42):
stakes like this If you can runin the Olympics, if you can be
the pope.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I did think, like the woman boxer, this last Olympics
, where there was all thiscontroversy about she was
allowed to participate.
She was allowed to participate.
She had been raised as a womanbut had failed some maybe
chromosome test, and so therewas all this controversy about
why is she being allowed toparticipate?
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Yeah, do you think this big reveal it just feels to
me like the last five minutesof conversation is so different
than the other things that wewere talking about in terms of
faith and doubt and politicalintrigue.
Do you think the big reveal wassomething that was necessary,
or did it add to the movie foryou?
Did it take away?
(45:30):
Was it just neutral?
What was your take on that?
Speaker 3 (45:33):
So, as I said earlier , I hadn't read the novel, but
when I was reading, doing someresearch for this, apparently
this reveal doesn't occur in thenovel from what I've been
reading.
Oh really, If my source iscorrect, this was added by the
writers of the movie.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
That's a big add.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
I think I can't I'd have to confirm that.
But one of the critics or oneof the articles I read about
that claimed that at least inthe novel it didn't appear.
So then you begin to wonderwhat was going on in the minds,
of why they thought that thiswas something that should be
added to the novel.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
Wow, that is interesting.
That seems to me.
If you've got any conservativeCatholics who enjoyed the book
and all of a sudden they go tothe movie and not knowing about
this, that would be a massivesurprise.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Yeah, what I thought was interesting like so if you,
everybody who had voted for thisperson to be Pope, did so
apparently because they thoughtthis person is demonstrating the
values and the qualities thatwe want to look for in our next
leader of the church, and so thereveal, in some ways, is that
(46:43):
doesn't change just because thatperson is intersex.
Those values and qualities arenot different.
Had it been somebody who hadhidden their real sexuality or
their real, then it doesundermine those values that
people thought this person had.
So in some ways I don't know itwas more confirming that
(47:06):
Lawrence doesn't denounce thisonce he hears the story that he
still sees this as legitimate.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Yeah, pope who had died did know about this and
still ordained him a cardinal.
Yes, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (47:20):
Yeah, I'm just wondering if this happened in
real life, how would the churchrespond?
There's no clear—I looked inthe catechism.
I went to Aquinas to find out,and Aquinas says that if you
don't have a nose, it would beillegal to be ordained a priest.
It's contrary to church lawBecause, going back to what's in
(47:45):
the Torah, the Old Testamentlaw, about priests being
undefiled and not having anyphysical deformities, he based
it on that and he used theexample of a priest who has lost
their nose or doesn't have anose, and so it wouldn't be of.
And he makes a distinctionbetween illegal and invalid
ordination.
(48:05):
An ordination of a woman wouldbe invalid, meaning that she's
not a priest.
You can't, even if you want to.
If a bishop wants to ordain awoman, it's not going to work.
Wants to ordain a woman, it'snot going to work.
But in the case of someone who,let's say, is physically
deformed, they would be.
Or is the other example hegives us of a child right
(48:26):
ordaining a boy?
It would be a valid ordination,but contrary to church law, and
so he would be a priest, but hewouldn't be able to legally
practice the sacraments or tocelebrate the sacraments.
As I understand it, I did avery quick reading of Aquinas,
but Aquinas gave me no guidancewhatsoever on intersex.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
So are your rule books.
Are that helping?
Speaker 2 (48:47):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
If this were to happen, what would the church
say?
What would the canon lawyerssay?
Speaker 1 (48:54):
And we're no closer.
This movie brings us no closerto female priests, let alone
female popes.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Yeah, the only kind of reference to that was one of
the one of the factions withinthe Cardinals were like yeah, we
, the liberal side, needs to winand we gotta, yeah, make sure
that those, the moreconservatives, don't get the
next Pope or whatever, but thatwas the only.
Speaker 1 (49:17):
And that's a conversation for another day but
the dearth of priests right nowand how women are very often
doing a significant amount ofthe priestly types of work
without the formal title ofpriest.
Is there anything we left outthat we need to talk about?
Speaker 3 (49:34):
I'm sure we did, but we've got to end it sometime,
all right.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
We will end that now, then.
I want to thank you guys somuch for coming and talking
about it.
First of all, thanks for comingout and watching the movie too.
That was a fun evening and thiswas a fun conversation.
Well, I think that wraps it up.
I want to thank our audiencefor sitting around the table
with us today.
I hope that we have providedyou with some food for thought
(50:01):
and that we've given yousomething to chew on, but we
aren't done yet.
After we finish the music, wealways have some leftovers for
you to enjoy, additionalthoughts we share with one
another after we wrap up.
So feel free to continuelistening, and we appreciate
your support, and, as part ofthat support, please consider
subscribing, rating andreviewing Church Potluck
(50:21):
wherever you are downloading it.
And I didn't mention some otherthings.
Next episode, we'll mentionsome other things that are going
on behind the scenes withChurch Potluck, until we gather
around the table next time.
This has been Church Potluck,and thank you so much for
listening.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
All right, I saw Michael Bailey this morning and
he said he got a text from Lydialast night saying he had to go
see Conclave.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Is that right?
And I said visually alone.
You will enjoy it just for thevisual aspect 100%, and you said
that they're going to have towin for costumes.
Yeah, unless there's some othermovie.
Speaker 3 (51:05):
It's hard to imagine.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
But also, just, I don't know what the award is for
, cinematography or visual orwhatever it is, but it was
stunning to me and you are soright that the umbrella scene.
Did you notice in the umbrellascene that there was one person
without an umbrella?
Speaker 2 (51:22):
No.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
Yes, there was someone.
I was about to say he was anolder white guy that doesn't do
much good does it.
But yeah, one person andobviously that's intentional,
right, all these beautifulumbrellas just circling, and
there was that one person whodidn't and I was like, no, you
got to have an umbrella, butthere was, for whatever reason,
(51:45):
there was one guy without.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Even the stuff like the ribbon covering the door
with the seal, and that was verydramatic, especially when he
breaks it.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
When I keep referring to it as a slow movie.
How long did they take to showthem putting a seal?
But you saw all the detail thatwas being paid attention to
right and every aspect ofattention 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 sacredmoment of showing that there's
(52:20):
such a reverence for thesetraditions.
I really did enjoy it.
I thought the other thought Ihad in terms of visual, all this
beauty and then the cardinalsseem to be sitting at like
really regular tables.
Oh yeah, the tables need anupgrade, yeah it seemed like
1950s and just regular flat,long tables, and so that part
(52:41):
seemed to have taken away fromthe ambiance of the whole rest
of the room.
Speaker 2 (52:45):
Yeah, and I could never like figure out, like what
is the order they're going into drop in?
Is it like based on who's beenCardinal longest the senior
Cardinal?
Yeah, I couldn't figure thatout and I did not do research on
that.
Who's been cardinal longest thesenior cardinal?
Speaker 3 (52:58):
Yeah, I couldn't figure that out and I did not do
research on that Did Benitezvote last Because I assume he
would be like the junior.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
Maybe he's a younger guy.
Yeah, I don't know.
I did do research on how manycardinals were Italian.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
That sounds like a joke.
Yeah, I know how many cardinals217 out of 266.
Speaker 2 (53:21):
Oh, not cardinals, Sorry.
Popes have been from Italy.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
How many?
Speaker 2 (53:26):
217 out of 266.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
That was almost a given for many centuries, right
that the pope would be Catholic.
Usually they're Catholic, Ithink 267 out of 267 of the
popes have been.
Speaker 3 (53:40):
Catholic.
It is the sea of Rome, right,it's the bishop of Rome, so you
would expect, normally you wouldget an Italian in that position
.
But also, it's not just the seaof Rome, it's the.
He's the supreme pontiff of thechurch, 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 Catholicbishops should be eligible to be
(54:04):
the pope.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
Wasn't Benedict Ratzinger, wasn't he the first
German pope?
Speaker 3 (54:08):
I'm trying to think Was he the first German?
Speaker 2 (54:11):
All right, this says that there were six Germans.
Speaker 3 (54:14):
Oh, I guess not.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
I thought he was the first as well, but this says no,
there were others.
Yeah, I remember growing up mymy folks always saying there's
never going to be a pope fromthe united states, just never
going to happen, and I couldn'tfigure out why, like, why not?
Speaker 3 (54:31):
we're cool, not cool enough, that's right, apparently
not what I've heard is thatthey don't want someone from any
of the superpowers because itwould give too much.
There's always the fear that,wherever the pope is from, that
their country or theirgovernment is going to influence
them, and so it's okay having apope from a less powerful
(54:54):
country like Germany or Polandor Argentina, but not from the
US.
That's just too many people inthe church would find that, like
you've got, america has so much.
Why do you need this?
Speaker 2 (55:08):
That's when you said the most powerful philosopher in
the world might be JD Vance.
Speaker 3 (55:12):
I'm like huh.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
I wonder what is did Francis?
What was?
Was Francis a philosopher?
Like, yeah, I Francis aphilosopher, yeah.
So I assume I don't know, yeah.
Speaker 3 (55:20):
I know John Paul had a doctorate in philosophy and in
theology too.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
I assume Benedict did right.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
Benedict probably did too, but yeah, so now it
depends upon who's more powerfulthe Pope or the Vice President
of the US?
Speaker 1 (55:33):
You had mentioned Cardinal Lawrence's empathy and
sympathy, even in the midst ofhis doubts, I thought the way
that he told the African bishopthat he would never be pope,
that conversation showed just—itwas very touching, very just,
loaded with empathy and care andsympathy for the cardinal's
position, but also being upfrontwith him about what this means,
(55:55):
because of the scandal.
Speaker 3 (55:56):
Yeah, that was something that in some ways,
it's just imagining being acardinal and being involved in
this.
As you said before, I wasinvolved in choosing a president
for Perry College, but that'ssmall potatoes compared to the
Pope.
Speaker 1 (56:11):
Oh, hold your tongue, hold your tongue.
Speaker 3 (56:13):
If the Pope messes up , that's really bad.
So you have to be reallycareful.
Speaker 1 (56:21):
You should have recommended that you write down
your votes on pieces of paperthat then you pierce with a
string.
That would have been reallycool.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
And I do think it's good that they don't like so.
Mike told us at lunch the otherday that the vote for the
president is always unanimous.
Right For the president of thecollege.
It is always unanimous rightFor the president of the college
.
It's a unanimous choice thateverybody agrees.
So I think it's good that wedon't find out what the number
of people were for voting forthis guy to become pope either.
This is who the selection is.
Speaker 1 (56:51):
I think that's.
Oh, can you imagine?
Speaker 2 (56:54):
No, he barely got over it.
Speaker 1 (56:56):
Can you imagine what it would like to have a leader
who only had a small majorityand sometimes not a popular vote
?
Speaker 3 (57:02):
majority, but just an electoral, could you?
Speaker 1 (57:05):
imagine such a situation.
I cannot no.
Speaker 3 (57:09):
Yeah, and I think especially with the election of
the Pope, when, if you really dobelieve, as many of us do, that
there's divine action, going onthat the Holy Spirit is moving
the cardinals.
You don't want to underminethat.
Speaker 2 (57:25):
Who was not moved by the Spirit?
Yeah, who was not moved by theSpirit, exactly?
Speaker 1 (57:30):
I've got a story that I probably shouldn't tell, but
anyway, I was visiting a churchand they brought up someone who
was talking about this passionto start a new church, and then
the leaders of this church thatwas already in existence told
the congregation so we want youto pray on this.
But they said but we alreadyhave, we know how the Holy
(57:53):
Spirit should be moving you.
And it was very clear that theywere saying that we have
already determined what theright answer is here and I
didn't feel very good about that.
I'd be really curious and I'msure somebody has written on
this about what would it looklike?
How does God work through allthe political and all the
ambition, and how does God?
What is the kind of theCatholic understanding of?
(58:13):
Even though there's a lot ofpoliticking going on, how does
that fit in with the idea ofthat God's spirit is what is
actually directing all of this?
Because I think that would saysomething for all of us.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
I think I told you guys both as we were leaving the
movie that it reminded me insome ways the way they talked
about who should be Pope, of howwe talk about who should be
academic leaders that you don'twant somebody who wants the job
about who should be academicleaders that you don't want
somebody who wants the job asfar as a dean or a department
chair because it reveals toomuch ambition.
Speaker 1 (58:45):
Isn't that funny that in order to be ambitious, you
have to appear that you don'tfeel ambitious.
It's a paradox.
Maybe it's a mistake that Inamed my new LLC company Church
Potluck Media.
Speaker 2 (59:02):
Empire, you should be more humble.
Speaker 3 (59:04):
Maybe a little too ambitious, maybe yeah, yeah, all
right.
Speaker 1 (59:08):
Thank you all so much .
Speaker 3 (59:10):
Thanks, dave, that was fun yeah.
Hey everybody, this episode of Church Potluck was
actually recorded way back inthe fall of 2024, so not quite a
year ago.
We did this when the movieConclave first came out and had
a great conversation about themovie, but life got busy and I
never actually published it outthere for you all to listen to
and it just sort of sat on mycomputer.
And then, when the Oscars cameout and Conclave was nominated,
(00:22):
I said, oh, what a greatopportunity to finally put this
out there.
And it didn't happen theneither.
And so now, with a Conclaveactually happening, with the
death of Pope Francis, this isone more opportunity, and so I
figure it's now or never.
So, finally, here is theepisode on the movie Conclave.
I hope you enjoy it.
Enjoy it.
(00:47):
Oh, I don't think this hashappened for you yet, christy,
but you, michael and MichaelBailey, you all are becoming
famous because of my podcast.
How, at least amongst my golfbuddies, 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 fromyour podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Right Word is getting out and that happened to
Michael Bailey Name-racking.
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Who knows where the ceiling is for you here?
Right, yeah, and I'm sure thatwill happen for you eventually,
eventually.
So Welcome everyone, toeveryone, to Church Potluck,
where we are serving up asmorgasbord of Christian
curiosity.
I'm your host, dale McConkie,sociology professor and United
Methodist pastor, and there aretwo keys to a good Church
(01:34):
Potluck plenty of variety andengaging conversation.
And this is exactly what we aretrying to do here on Church
Potluck sitting down withfriends and sharing our ideas on
a variety of topics from avariety of academic disciplines
and a variety of Christiantraditions.
Welcome back everybody.
It's good to see you guys.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Glad to be here.
Yeah, it's good to have you.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
This is only our second recording of the semester
and you were not on the firstone, 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 lotsgoing on.
I'll give you a choice.
You can comment on either oneof those, either one of them,
okay.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
I guess I can comment on the Barry president.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
We're very happy, which makes sense because you
were on the search committee forthat.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
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 Ithink he's really going to do a
great job here at Baylor, soI'm looking forward to working
with him.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
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 theelection.
No, you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I would just say that one of the things I like to do
at election time is to see whatwere the undergrad degrees of
the people who the presidentchooses for their cabinet, and I
have not worked that out yet.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Just to see if there's some humanities, people
in there, yeah, yeah, just tosee if there's some humanities
people in there.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Our vice president-elect was a philosophy
and political science major at.
Ohio State.
So he's the most powerfulphilosophy major in the world
there you go.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
I like that and my parents being from my mom being
from Ann Arbor and my dad goingto University of Michigan, I
guess the Ohio State part justcancels the rest of that Well.
Anyway, it's good to be here.
We've already introduced youtwo, but let's go ahead and do
it more formally.
Let's welcome back ChristySnyder.
I was waiting for the applause.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
The audience was a little delayed there.
Yeah, glad to be here.
I am a historian at BerryCollege and I am also a Catholic
.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Which is very important for today's
conversations, and also ourCatholic expert, michael
Papazian.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Thank you, it's good to be back again.
I call myself Catholic adjacent.
I like that.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
We have a lot in common, so I need a laugh button
.
I don't have a laugh button.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
No, no, that wasn't that funny.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
That's why we need the button.
Oh, I see.
Anyway, what are we going totalk about today?
I think we need to have somemusic for that as well.
I love this music.
This is my favorite.
This is my favorite, JesusChrist movie star Sure, do we
(04:34):
believe?
What movies say you are?
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Jesus Christ movie star.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
All right, so this might be a bit of a stretch,
because Jesus is not really themovie 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 aboutthe movie Conclave, a
suspenseful, mystery-soaked,intrigue-filled, dramatic,
(05:00):
political, religious thrillercalled Conclave.
What'd y'all think?
We'll just get just a thumbs up, thumbs down part of it first.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
So I really enjoyed it and I thought it was.
I didn't think it would be athriller, so it's not a thriller
like James Bond or whatever,but it definitely it's the
slowest thriller in all of humanhistory in a good way.
Yes, and so it definitely hadme interested in what was going
to happen the whole time thatI'm watching it.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Absolutely, I agree.
Thumbs up, thumbs up.
It was a great movie, I reallyenjoyed it and it was really
just gripping.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And it's getting very good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
and everywhere else that I cansee.
Actually, we should mentionthat the three of us all watched
it together.
That's right, it was fun.
Just a little side note beforewe get into the movie.
Was that something unique foryou?
I hardly ever go to thetheaters these days.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, I did go with one of our other colleagues and
saw Wolverine versus who was heversus Deadpool or something?
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
And so totally different.
But sometimes it is nice to bein a theater again to watch.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
It was, and I think there were things about this
movie that made it nice to seeit on the big screen.
One of the things that Inoticed was just how visually
stunning it was, and I've readsome over some reviews and they
really haven't mentioned thattoo much.
But it for it wasn't filmed inthe Vatican, but they found some
very Vatican-like places torecord on.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
They were in the.
I guess the pseudo or thevirtual.
Sistine Chapel, but it lookedlike they were there, but they
weren't.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
I have no idea how they did that and it wasn't AI.
No, I don't think so, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
And just the way how the cardinals were dressed and
during the one scene with theumbrellas, the red and the white
.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
it was just really stunning.
I thought, yeah, I thought justthe visually it was stunning
and actually part of it it's gotto win Oscar for costume design
.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
I think you would hope and I guess this is a good
time to mention that we aregoing to have spoilers
throughout.
We're going to go ahead andjust talk about the movie, and
so if you don't want to listento this until after you've
watched the movie, please go dothat.
And there's also one bigspoiler that we won't talk about
until the very end of thepodcast, but when we do get to
that, we will make sure we letyou know about the spoiler,
because we'll play this Spoileralert, because we'll play this
(07:22):
Spoiler alert, all right.
So when you hear this Spoileralert, just realize that we're
going to do a big reveal at theend of the episode, so you might
want to turn it off at thattime.
So, yeah, just so much thoughtinto something, just like
walking down a hallway, just thegrandiosity that it felt, the
artwork surrounding it justreally for me, just brought me
(07:46):
into the movie in a way that Idon't always notice visual
effects and things, but that wasvery striking to me.
Christy, you are our one andonly Catholic, not
Catholic-adjacent person on thepanel today.
Just as someone who is Catholic, what were your thoughts going
through watching it as someoneof the Catholic faith?
Speaker 2 (08:08):
So I was.
So some of the things thatreally struck me was, right at
the very beginning, thetreatment of the Pope who had
just passed away, and how itbrought like all the people, I
assume, who are in the Vaticanhierarchy together.
So that was interesting.
(08:29):
And then how quickly thoughtsturned to we need to now choose
somebody new.
There's going to be thiselection.
That has to happen.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yes, and hence the term conclave, the title, so
Michael or Christy.
Just let's give some contextfor people who may not be
familiar with that term and whathappens when a pope dies.
What is a conclave?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Literally, it means they're locked up, there's a key
in there, yeah, and they'resequestered, basically until
they elect a pope.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
So these are all the bishop cardinals all the
cardinals from all over theglobe.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Yeah, let me just say I think that was also one of
the things that impressed me bythe portrayal that on one level,
when you look at all thecardinals in their vestments,
you've got a really and alsojust the people really a good
idea of the whole the diversityof the Catholic Church.
Geographically, ethnically,every nation in the world is
(09:30):
represented and of course,catholic means universal.
So that embodied that On onelevel it's diverse.
On the other, they're all oldmen.
So it's an interestingjuxtaposition where you got all
that.
And as an Eastern Christian, Iespecially appreciated that we
saw some of the Easterncardinals.
So they're Eastern Catholicchurches and some of the Eastern
(09:51):
Catholic churches havecardinals, and in the depiction
in the movie where you couldnotice that some of them were
not wearing the traditionalLatin cardinal vestments but
were wearing, I think, syriac orCoptic, I wasn't quite sure.
So it also represented thediversity of languages and
cultures in the church.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
There was so much of that I said I know I'm missing
stuff here.
I know that I'm notunderstanding why they're purple
and they're red.
There's so much going on that Ido want to go back and just
have the theater to myself so Ican 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
(10:31):
sequestered and stayingsequestered until they have
elected a new pope.
It is a very democratic process, but it's also a democratic
process that is just steeped incenturies and centuries of
tradition, and that was, I think, again beautifully portrayed.
I had forgotten about theneedle going through the votes
(10:52):
as a way of knowing that theywere counted.
And then I did know about theblack smoke and the white smoke,
the black smoke meaningunsuccessful vote, we don't have
a pope yet, and then that's theburning of the ballots.
But then you burn the ballot,put a little different color ash
in there and all of a suddenyou've got white smoke saying we
have our card, have our pope.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
So I am not a church historian, but I was very
interested in where did thisprocess come from?
And so apparently it is aprocess from around the 12, oh
wait, 1059, the 12, oh wait,1059, oh no, 12, I'm sorry.
(11:31):
1268 is when the first conclavehappened, and the problem was
they couldn't choose, theycouldn't agree on who would be
Pope, and so there's like threeyears where they don't have a
Pope, a sitting Pope, andfinally they get them together
again, they lock them in thisroom.
They still can't come to adecision, and so, supposedly,
the people of Rome tore the roofoff of where they were meeting
(11:51):
so they would be subject to theweather and only fed them water
and bread until they finallycame up with okay, here's your
Pope.
Came up with okay, here's yourpope.
But it was also a way to get itout of having influence from
secular leaders, whether it beByzantine emperors or other
(12:13):
emperors.
So I found that veryinteresting that there is this
long kind of historicalreasoning for why they do it the
way they do it.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Very cool and I want to get into the intrigue and the
political aspects of this movie.
But first I need your help inidentifying the characters.
I am terrible.
I know the actors sometimes andsometimes I don't, but
especially the names, and so I'mgoing to give you the name.
We're going to have a game showhere.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
I am bad at this too, yeah name.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
We're gonna actually we're gonna we're gonna have a
game show here.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
I already see michael lapazian looking at my notes
over here.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
So I'm not cheating, all right, and I didn't come.
Who's that actor?
We'll, we'll just do it thatway.
Who's that actor?
So I'm gonna give you one, I'mgonna give you the name, and
then you got buzzers there.
Michael, give, show us whatyour buzzer sounds like, all
right.
And christy, what is yourbuzzer?
All right, show us what yourbuzzer sounds like, all right.
And Christy, what is yourbuzzer?
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 andyou tell me who the character is
(13:12):
, or I can give you thecharacter and then give you the
actor.
Which one do you prefer?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Character.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Okay, yeah, okay, here's one, cardinal Bellini.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Yes, stanley Tucci.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah, good job, good job.
But if you hesitated like thaton that one and Chris, you
didn't even try.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
This may not be a good game show.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
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 anensemble cast, but at the core
is Cardinal Lawrence, played by.
Ralph Fiennes Is that right,actually I don't have my boo bud
(14:00):
, but no, you're very close, notRalph Fiennes.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Ralph, ralph, ralph.
Yeah, I thought he pronouncedit Rafe, but I could be wrong,
oh that could be too, and Ithought it was Finney's.
It doesn't matter, I thought itwas.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Finney's Christy gets it.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
No, that's fine.
This is like Jeopardy.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Who is Ralph Fiennes English List?
I did not even know that he wasVoldemort.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Yeah, that's a great actor.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
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 (14:29):
No.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
That is just recommend.
It's a disturbing movie but Iencourage you to watch that
sometime.
But anyway, and my son and Iboth like the Grand Budapest
Hotel, we watched that together.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
So many things that he's involved in, so we might
just go, rather than goingthrough the rest of these, which
I'm afraid.
Oh, here I'll give you a niceSister, Agnes Isabella
Rossellini.
Yeah, yeah, she might win anOscar for that, they're saying.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Oh really.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Is that right?
Apparently?
Speaker 3 (14:58):
yeah, that's what I just read this morning in my
research All right.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I wasn't going to go there this fast, but why, I
don't know.
Okay, because I don't want tosay that she was not, and so I
want to be careful that shewasn't shoehorned in there.
But this is not a movie thatwould pass the Bechdel test.
No, oh no, not at all Becauseyou have to have more than one
woman in the movie to have aconversation and there are.
I'm over-exaggerating, but thisis very much, as you have
(15:23):
already said, michael, a movieabout older men who are the ones
in charge, but Sister Agnesdoes play a pivotal role in that
.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
At least yeah in a couple of scenes.
But I think one scene is whereshe probably has the strongest
presence of yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
What did you remember about that scene?
Speaker 2 (15:41):
So that is a scene where she is just commenting on
how the nuns are not allowed tohave a say in the selection of
the new leader, but they do haveopinions about how things
should work and when things arebeing done incorrectly, men
(16:05):
should be called to account,whether they are priests or
cardinals or not.
And yeah, I would say that'sprobably the part that she might
be the reason why she's not.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Her little monologue there was powerful and speaking
for the people and a statementfor today as well, I'm assuming,
not just, and actually themovie is set in relatively
contemporary I don't know theexact timeline, but it's set in
contemporary times.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah, they all had cell phones which they could not
bring in with them and thingslike that.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah, one of the sources I was reading said that
it was pretty obvious that thePope that passed away was
supposed to be Francis.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
So, I'm assuming this is like future, near future
perhaps what were the themesthat you thought came through in
the movie?
We start off talking about thepolitical intrigue and the
voting process and all thesequestering.
Do you think it was acoincidence that this was
released in late October, rightbefore the elections?
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I thought there would be more kind of American
politics references, or at leastmore overt ones.
I didn't pick up on that many,but Christy you might have.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
You're shaking your head.
No, Christy, no I didn't reallysee the political election
connection the same way.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
When something at the very beginning of the movie,
when they start talking about weneed an election, I said, oh my
goodness, this is going to be amoral tale for us today, a
morality tale for Americanpolitics today, and I agree that
very quickly it slipped intojust it was all about who's the
next pope going to be, and I didnot picture overt messages
(17:36):
about American politics, but wesaw a lot of American style
politics going on in the voteand I think that's one of the
points to be made that here arepeople who are supposed to be
serving God, supposed to bedoing this very humbly, seeking
the Holy Spirit's direction onwho is pope.
But you see a tremendous amountof political factioning and a
(17:59):
lot of behind-the-sceneswrangling, a lot of closed-door
deals.
I guess it's always closed-door.
So what did youall think aboutthat?
Any further thoughts on?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
that On it being closed door or American
connected to politics in general.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
No, just the way that they portrayed the political
side and the ambitious side ofthese.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Yeah, I don't know what cardinals do when they're
locked in together, but fromwhat I've read, these are
extremely ambitious men andwhile you're not supposed to let
on that, you want to be pope.
Everyone wants to be pope.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
And that came out right.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Everyone was trying to act like they didn't want it,
but you want it.
It was very.
I did think, and I do thinkthere's probably a couple of
ideological factions within the.
Catholic Church, definitelyrepresented by the current Pope
Francis as well as the formerPope Benedict and I thought that
came out fairly well andreferences to maybe other
(19:00):
factions as well, although notas strong.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
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 reformor an agent of going back, and I
thought that was done very well.
But it was also regionalaspects right.
Are we really going to have anAfrican Pope?
I remember when I first washere at Barry I think this was
(19:26):
right around the time that PopeFrancis was named as the pope
there was a lot of speculation Iforget which cardinal it was,
but that perhaps the CatholicChurch would have its first
African pope.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yeah, there's a Cardinal Serra who is I believe
is he from Ghana, I think one ofthe West African countries
who's often named as a potentialpope.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
And so the Italians, oh yeah, the Italians.
I forget his name, but it wasvery much set up as the
reactionary conservative thatwas Cardinal Tedesco.
Yes, yes, there you go.
I don't know the actor's name.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
He has a long Italian name, but I don't remember it.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
No me either.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Although he was also from the critics, I read they
thought he did a really good job.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
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 castingwas wonderful.
Again, this is not my strength,but I really enjoyed the
casting.
I like Stanley Tucci inanything.
The one that didn't ring withme, quite true, was John Lithgow
(20:28):
.
I just still saw him as thealien from Third Rock in the Sun
and I know he's done so manyother things and he's a serious
actor, but I always saw him asthe actor rather than as his
character, for whatever reason.
That had trouble.
That's the only person I hadtrouble with.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Yeah, for whatever reason, he didn't sound like a
cardinal to me, so I don't know.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And I thought the Wait.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Oh, I'm sorry, oh, go ahead.
Was he American in the movieCanadian Canadian?
So maybe that's the reason that.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yeah, of course You've got to To be a cardinal
and his way of trying to obtainthe papacy was.
It did not strike me aslegitimate as some of the others
that were being talked about.
(21:16):
Very underhanded, yeah, veryunderhanded this idea that even
after he's supposedly beendismissed by the previous pope,
he's not going to admit that.
And yeah, that part just didnot strike me as being as
realistic, maybe.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
And he flies someone in to be part of a scandal, to
expose the scandal, and that'sone of those things that if you
get found out, of course thatwould just destroy your
reputation.
So that was harder to suspend.
Disbelief on that perhaps.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Yeah, I may have a more negative view of human
nature.
I actually think something likethat may happen.
I don't know.
People do all sorts of deviousand underhanded things that seem
incomprehensible, but inpolitics and in the church,
things happen.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
This has no relation to the selection of our current
president for Barry right.
Oh, no, okay, I just want tomake sure.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
No, I'm just saying.
I said these things do happen.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Not in academic politics.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Okay, there you go, never in academic politics.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Okay, there you go.
Never in academic politics.
Another big theme in the movieis that of faith and doubt, and
the more progressive wing of theCatholic Church, and especially
the Phineas character.
Cardinal Lawrence, who is theone presiding over the conclave,
gives a speech and just reallycomes out saying how doubt is
(22:43):
very important to faith, and heactually concludes his monologue
for me a very powerfulmonologue he concludes it with
may God grant us a pope whodoubts.
And I was curious about whatyou thought about that monologue
or if you had any other furtherthoughts.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
I've got further thoughts on it, but yeah, I
thought his character was themost moving character.
So here's somebody who hadasked to be released from his
position.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
He had asked.
Yeah, he had asked.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
The former pope did not want to release him because
he was doubting his faith andquestioning his faith, and yet
many times within the movie whenother people needed comforting,
he prayed with them.
He tried to help them in theirkind of faith beliefs, and so I
(23:34):
thought that was a really welldone part of the film.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Yeah, I guess to many peopleit's shocking to say that a pope
who doubts or a clergyman whobut I think it's pretty common I
hear all the time about peoplewho are even in, who are
committed to the church, whohave doubts all the time.
Yes, I can't imagine someone offaith not having doubts maybe
(24:00):
not all the time, every now andthen.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I think that's why his character was so compelling,
was because there was anearnestness, right, and he said
I wish I had it written down andI forgot to put it in my notes
here.
But he said certainty is theenemy of faith, that if you have
certainty then you don'tquestion, you don't have that
wonder and you don't have thatawe.
And so having doubts allowsthat opening for mystery.
(24:26):
And I found that to be a verywonderful speech and the only
thing I was critiquing it in mypastorally role and just also in
my professional life thatsometimes we use doubt and it
might be just semantics, butdoubt seems to imply a negative
view of your faith.
Right, that you're a dismissiveview of your faith.
(24:48):
But if you put in the wordquestioning, or if you put in
the word wondering, or if youput in the word church, potluck,
curiosity, right that you'reopen to a diversity of
understandings that are beyondhow you understand God.
I think that makes it for mevery compelling, beyond how you
understand God.
I think that makes it for mevery compelling, and doubt might
be one aspect of that.
But I don't know if I'mchanging the message that was
(25:10):
trying to come across in themovie or not.
So you're nodding but nottalking.
This is.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
We're doubting and questioning.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
So you're doubting my response there.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
One issue, from a Catholic perspective, of course,
is that you've got all thesedogmas that you're not supposed
to doubt, you're not supposed toquestion.
So there may be certain thingsthat come up for questioning,
but the central dogmas of thechurch are supposed to be
accepted without question.
That's a good point.
And so there is that tension.
You can see why thetraditionalists would be made
(25:41):
very nervous by a pope whodoubts what is he going to doubt
next?
Is he going to doubt theresurrection?
Is he going to doubt thesacraments, the Eucharist, that
it's the real presence.
So there's that danger thatwhen you begin doubting certain
things, that's going to lead toother doubting things that maybe
(26:02):
, from a Catholic perspective,should not be doubted.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
That's a great point because on the other end of the
spectrum in terms of Lurgy, butour fundamentalist Christians I
have often heard growing up andstudying various perspectives
very often you'll hearfundamentalists say if you doubt
this, then it will lead todoubting that, it will lead to
doubting this and it will allcome crashing down.
So if you don't hold on to ourbeliefs in total, if you don't
(26:29):
believe every single thing inthe Bible, it would be the
fundamentalist thing.
If you don't believe everysingle thing, then if you
question this, why don't youquestion that?
And it all comes down, which Ithink is a false argument.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
And I do think there was a you saw this with his
character in the movie a fear ofnot wanting to be a hypocrite
either, so that he really pushesoff any suggestion that he
should be Pope.
I think because he realizesthat by having that doubt it
would just be illegitimate forhim to serve in that role until
(27:03):
towards the end, where he's likeconvinced that maybe I should
do this yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Actually being called .
Come on, everybody wants to bePope.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Come on Admit it.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
So we haven't talked about one of the characters in
the movie and for a while youdon't understand why this person
is there.
I was wondering.
I was very curious where theywere going with this right, and
let's see what is his name.
Is it Benitez?
Yes, cardinal Benitez, who is acardinal who nobody else knows
about because he was fairlyrecently credentialized as a
(27:38):
cardinal by the pope, who is nowdead, and I forget exactly why
nobody knows it's in Latin, inthe chest or in the heart.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
So the Pope can name cardinals and not reveal that
they're cardinals.
And, from what I've read, insome cases the Pope may not even
tell the cardinal who was namedthat they're cardinals.
But it is done.
I think we know that Pope JohnPaul II named at least four in
(28:08):
pectore cardinals during hispapacy, mostly Eastern European
ones who were under Sovietdomination.
The reason why it's done is sothat you can have a cardinal in
a particular region and notexpose them to persecution.
I think it's also done in China, where the Catholic Church is
(28:28):
severely repressed by thecommunist regime.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Although I did read as well that if it is not
revealed at some point beforethe Pope who has made this
cardinal, it doesn't count afterhe dies.
So the fact that yeah, so thatwas like a breaking of church
doctrine, that they'd berecognized after the pope had
passed away.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Oh, so there was one blooper in the movie?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yes, at least one, at least one.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah, thank you.
I'm going to enjoy my ownpodcast because I had missed
that.
I heard the in pectore, but Idid not.
I just thought that man lostpaperwork.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah, that's the bureaucratic error, I assume,
because he had been named theArchbishop of Kabul in
Afghanistan, where of coursethere are very few Catholics.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Very few Catholics.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Although there was a.
This might have been areference to the fact that
recently, pope Francis named acardinal in Mongolia, which only
has about 1,000 Catholics inthe entire country, and so maybe
I don't know if that was aninspiration in the movie, but
the idea is in a country likeAfghanistan, you probably
(29:32):
wouldn't want to be recognizedas the leader of the Catholic
church, but rather just remainincognito or under the radar,
and yet he was named a cardinal.
The fact that he was named acardinal is what's quite
extraordinary, because usuallyyou think about cardinals being
the archbishops of big citieslike New York as a cardinal and
Los Angeles.
You don't think of these small,out-of-the-way places like
(29:55):
Kabul and Mongolia, which don'thave substantial Catholic
populations, as having acardinal.
Very interesting.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
That was actually very helpful.
Something that I had troublesuspending my disbelief in was
the fact that this up to thatmoment unknown cardinal would
actually receive votes on thevery first ballot right.
So the movie shows all the bigname cardinals, all the major
political players gettingroughly even amounts, but nobody
(30:26):
getting anywhere near the twothirds majority needed to become
the pope.
But this guy gets like fivevotes on the first and nobody
knew him.
And so what do you think wasgoing on there?
I actually asked my good friendChatGPT about this and got some
answers.
But, did you have any problemwith that, or I thought that was
a little unusual.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
I thought it was odd, because you kept us guessing
who was supporting him yeah, whowas his friend or whatever and
why were they supporting him?
And maybe they just put that inas just like a teaser,
something for us to talk aboutin the podcast, it made it clear
that this person would play arole later on.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
That's true, yeah, so maybe that had something to do
with it.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
And I thought, I don't know, I thought maybe it
was that, yeah, they had beenserving in this dangerous
position and hadn't they comefrom 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 knowlike you must be a great
Catholic if you have done thesejobs, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
And that's what I uncovered, or at least got
gleaned from my research.
The other possible thing isthat was a negative vote.
I don't want any of these powerbrokers, so I'm going to vote
for the person least likely tobe able to become Pope type of a
thing broker so I'm going tovote for the person least likely
to be able to become Pope typeof a thing.
Before we start getting intothe deeper issues, here the big
(31:51):
spoiler what do you think wasthe purpose of the explosion?
Was that just to add some drama?
Or did we need to have thatexplosion to have the speech
that came after the explosionthat led up to that?
I was trying to think what thepurpose behind that was.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
It was dramatic.
Yeah, it was dramatic yeah.
And artistic yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
So before we got the speech, I thought that it was
actually like a signal toLawrence, who had just voted for
himself, that this is Godsaying no, you should not be
pope.
So that's how I took it.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
And I think you're probably right.
So I'm asking a very sillyquestion what does the voice of
God mean in this context?
Yeah, because it happened at avery dramatic moment.
I think that's actuallyprobably a very profound thing
that I was dismissing.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
I think God did appear later, right, because
when Benitez was elected rightbefore I think he was elected
wasn't there a wind that youheard through the windows of the
Sistine Chapel?
Of course that's a reference tothe Holy Spirit.
Because Catholics believe thatit's not really the cardinals
who are choosing the Pope, butthe Holy Spirit is moving them,
(32:59):
so their choice is guided by God.
So really, the Pope is chosenby God.
So the movie did make areference to that.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
I think yes absolutely.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
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 senseof the church in Europe being
besieged, almost so.
It gave the sense of the churchin Europe being besieged,
almost that.
Here we are in Rome, the centerof Christendom, of European
(33:30):
Christendom, and the cardinalsand the people there are just as
much threatened byanti-Christian violence as
someone living in the MiddleEast or some other part of the
world.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
And, of course, the conservative bishop said as much
and he made a big deal Afterthat speech where he was so vile
about this is what's happeningto our countries, this is what's
happening to our church becauseof Islam, and it was just a
very hard line.
I was predicting which I do aterrible job predicting in these
instances but I thought thenext line was going to be that
(34:05):
the terrorists were hardlineCatholics.
Yeah, I thought something likethat would happen too, but it
didn't.
It didn't.
They left it there as it wasMuslim extremists.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
And so that part of the movie probably was another
part that I thought that hisspeech was over the top.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
And I hope cardinals or not don't talk like that, and
I do think there are plenty ofpeople in the church who feel
like the church is besieged, butI don't think it's Islam.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Nobody.
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Yeah, go ahead.
I should not have interruptedyou there, but I was just going
to say nobody can rise to thatlevel of power using that kind
of rhetoric, not even I.
Stop.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Stop A little irony there, okay.
All right Good point.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
I'm sorry to have interrupted you.
Go ahead, Christy.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
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 themovie.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Interesting yeah so.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
I do think there are hardliners in the Catholic
Church.
I don't think that is the issuethat they are hardline about.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Yeah, the only reason why I thought I didn't have
exactly the same reaction isbecause it seemed to me that his
character, even though he wasItalian, was actually meant to
represent Pope Benedict, who didget into trouble for making it.
Now it was taken out of context, but in a speech he gave in
Germany, a lecture, he did saysomething that was perceived as
(35:36):
anti-Islamic.
I don't think it was, but ofcourse the soundbite sounded
like like it was, and then thenext thing that cardinal tedesco
in the movie said was this isthe result of relativism which
of course was one of benedict'smain he talked about the
dictatorship of relativism thathad corrupted civilization, and
(35:59):
I don't know if the movie makersof the I think this is based on
a novel yes, I haven't read.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
I should have mentioned that.
A 2016 novel.
Last name Harris.
I forget his first name, yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
And now, tedesco in Italian means German, so I was
wondering if they chose thatname, or he chose the novelist,
or whoever chose that name andthen had him give a speech that
was a really very conservativespeech, along the lines of
something maybe Benedict wouldsay if that was all connected
(36:28):
there.
So I don't know, I'm justspeculating.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah, the relativism.
That sounded more real to methan the Islamic fear.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
So I totally missed the Benedict connection.
But that makes sense.
He was the embodiment, therepresentation of Benedict for
the movie Interesting.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Yeah, I should say, in case people don't know,
Benedict was German.
That's what the Ginesco.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
And, in case you don't know, he was the Cardinal
Ratzinger and did the veryunusual thing of resigning his
position.
Popes don't resign, popes arepopes 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.
(37:14):
All right, spoiler alert Onemore time, just to be careful.
Spoiler alert, all right.
So there's a big twist at theend, and so what we haven't said
is that, but probably impliedcardinal vincent benitez is
elected the pope, and I thoughtthat was the twist.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
It is a big twist.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
It is a big twist and I thought that was going to be
over, that was going to be theend of the movie, and there's
going to be this ray of sunshine, this person who is so humble
we haven't really talked toomuch about Benitez, but you've
mentioned just serving in themost difficult and tragic of
places, under terribleconditions.
He comes over, he's very humble, he reminds everybody what are
we truly doing here as cardinalsand electing a pope.
(37:59):
And so he becomes the hero andhe wins, he becomes pope.
And then who wants to share thebig reveal One more time?
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Spoiler alert.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Oh, I don't know who should do that.
So the big reveal is that hewas born with women's ovaries
and a uterus, yes, but raised aman and found out in his young
adulthood that, yes, his yes,that yes yes, no clue that he
(38:41):
had any female biology untilvery late in his life because of
a surgery, and so up to thatpoint, just no clue.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
So it had always been raised a man and so he's
intersex.
And this is the big reveal atthe end, and I guess the
previous pope did know and wenton with it.
So I don't know what are wesupposed to take from it.
I'm sure I wasn't the firstperson to think of it, although
none of the critics, maybebecause the critics were not
doing the spoiler alert.
But I was so proud of myself,even though you both said you
(39:07):
had already thought of it too.
But this is a Catholic cryinggame, right?
You don't know until the bigreveal at the very end, and it
turns out this person is adifferent sex.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
But what are we to make of this?
One thing is that it raises,first of all, I was wondering
what the implications are forthe ordination rules in the
Catholic Church, because theonly men can be ordained.
And so now, of course, thequestion is what is a man?
I know what is a woman.
It's not so simple.
Presumably.
I looked up a little bit aboutthe, perhaps the medical
condition that Benitez had, andpresumably he had XY chromosomes
(39:44):
, but he had some kind ofhormonal imbalance or whatever,
or condition that resulted in auterus in addition to his male
reproductive organs.
So what is he or what is she orthey?
And so the question is was hevalidly ordained in this case?
(40:06):
Now, since this is a rarecondition, a lot of people have
been ordained Catholic priests.
It's quite likely that maybethere are priests with this who
have uteruses and don't evenknow it, maybe even a pope.
I mentioned after the moviethat there's a legend, a myth,
of Pope Joan, who allegedlylived in the 9th century, who
(40:29):
disguised herself as a man andbecame elected pope.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
You're saying that with a big old smile on your
face.
You relish in the myths, don'tyou?
Speaker 3 (40:37):
I love all these myths and urban legends and all,
and it has been.
I think almost every historiansays there's not a shred of
evidence for this that probablyit was anti-Catholic or
anti-papal propaganda.
But I just wonder if that'salso behind the movie too,
something like that, that inthat case there was a big reveal
(40:59):
too.
According to the legend shewould have been it would have
been Pope John, but later onthey called her Pope John
because apparently she gavebirth during a papal procession,
and that's how it came out.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Literally this is not who we thought it was.
If the first part of that thatthere was a female pope, that is
a stretch.
That the big reveal comesduring a papal procession, it's
probably an even bigger stretch.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
But I think it does raise issues about the
ordination issue, becauseobviously that's one of the
things that is a major concernand controversy within the
Catholic Church and within theOrthodox churches too.
We only ordain men, and now ofcourse, this raises the
possibility that there areintersex people, and if you can
validly ordain intersex people,why not women?
(41:48):
So I think that's part of whatI got out of that.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Yeah, yeah, I did see some Catholic commentary that
suggested that this was a tooeasy way to end it, that because
it was an exceedingly raremedical condition, would it have
been different if it wassomebody who had been raised a
(42:13):
woman but had pulled off this?
That that is a different, awoman or but had like pulled off
this, that that is a different?
And I actually thought beingthe intersex question actually
made it more interesting onlybecause I thought the whole
commentary benito gave for whythey didn't have their ovaries
and uterus removed, that this isthe way that god made me and so
(42:36):
changing it'd be changingsomething that God ordained.
I thought that was a—it doeslead to thoughts, but I did
think it was a nice way toexplain her decision and maybe
the former Pope's decision, fornot revealing it.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah, and I think sometimes we do say this is so
rare of course we don't evenneed to think about it.
And yet I talked about this inmy sex and gender class a couple
semesters ago and it came up Itouched on it briefly in my
intro class that these lines wethink so obviously in
male-female, but these lines areblurry, right, and the fact
(43:16):
that since 1968, the OlympicGames have changed have had like
four different ways ofdetermining whether you're male
or female, and they all havecomplications, right.
So they used to for a littlewhile they just did flat out
physical examinations and theycalled them nude parades, where
women had to parade out todemonstrate that they were men.
(43:38):
And then they went chromosomaltests and then a different
chromosomal test and theyrealized that there were some
complications, that thereweren't just two simple little
categories for chromosomes, andso there was some difficulties
there.
And now it's based ontestosterone levels and it
doesn't have anything to dowhether you're male or female,
it's.
Are you really, are men's andwomen's categories in the
olympics right?
Do, whether you're male orfemale, really, our men's and
women's categories in theOlympics right now?
(43:59):
Are you high testosterone orlow testosterone?
Forget the name of the SouthAfrican runner who is not
allowed to participate in someof the races.
No one's doubting she was bornfemale.
No one's doubting that she'snever taken steroids, that this
is all natural hyper andronism.
I didn't pronounce thatproperly.
Forgive me, but she has thiscondition where her testosterone
(44:20):
is very high.
It gives her a naturaladvantage, just like Michael
Phelps Massive wingspan giveshim a natural advantage, but she
is not allowed to participatein many high-level athletic
events because of this, and sothat is just fascinating to me.
This question of something thatseems so simple whether you're
male or female can get socomplex when determining in
(44:42):
stakes like this If you can runin the Olympics, if you can be
the pope.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I did think, like the woman boxer, this last Olympics
, where there was all thiscontroversy about she was
allowed to participate.
She was allowed to participate.
She had been raised as a womanbut had failed some maybe
chromosome test, and so therewas all this controversy about
why is she being allowed toparticipate?
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Yeah, do you think this big reveal it just feels to
me like the last five minutesof conversation is so different
than the other things that wewere talking about in terms of
faith and doubt and politicalintrigue.
Do you think the big reveal wassomething that was necessary,
or did it add to the movie foryou?
Did it take away?
(45:30):
Was it just neutral?
What was your take on that?
Speaker 3 (45:33):
So, as I said earlier , I hadn't read the novel, but
when I was reading, doing someresearch for this, apparently
this reveal doesn't occur in thenovel from what I've been
reading.
Oh really, If my source iscorrect, this was added by the
writers of the movie.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
That's a big add.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
I think I can't I'd have to confirm that.
But one of the critics or oneof the articles I read about
that claimed that at least inthe novel it didn't appear.
So then you begin to wonderwhat was going on in the minds,
of why they thought that thiswas something that should be
added to the novel.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
Wow, that is interesting.
That seems to me.
If you've got any conservativeCatholics who enjoyed the book
and all of a sudden they go tothe movie and not knowing about
this, that would be a massivesurprise.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Yeah, what I thought was interesting like so if you,
everybody who had voted for thisperson to be Pope, did so
apparently because they thoughtthis person is demonstrating the
values and the qualities thatwe want to look for in our next
leader of the church, and so thereveal, in some ways, is that
(46:43):
doesn't change just because thatperson is intersex.
Those values and qualities arenot different.
Had it been somebody who hadhidden their real sexuality or
their real, then it doesundermine those values that
people thought this person had.
So in some ways I don't know itwas more confirming that
(47:06):
Lawrence doesn't denounce thisonce he hears the story that he
still sees this as legitimate.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Yeah, pope who had died did know about this and
still ordained him a cardinal.
Yes, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (47:20):
Yeah, I'm just wondering if this happened in
real life, how would the churchrespond?
There's no clear—I looked inthe catechism.
I went to Aquinas to find out,and Aquinas says that if you
don't have a nose, it would beillegal to be ordained a priest.
It's contrary to church lawBecause, going back to what's in
(47:45):
the Torah, the Old Testamentlaw, about priests being
undefiled and not having anyphysical deformities, he based
it on that and he used theexample of a priest who has lost
their nose or doesn't have anose, and so it wouldn't be of.
And he makes a distinctionbetween illegal and invalid
ordination.
(48:05):
An ordination of a woman wouldbe invalid, meaning that she's
not a priest.
You can't, even if you want to.
If a bishop wants to ordain awoman, it's not going to work.
Wants to ordain a woman, it'snot going to work.
But in the case of someone who,let's say, is physically
deformed, they would be.
Or is the other example hegives us of a child right
(48:26):
ordaining a boy?
It would be a valid ordination,but contrary to church law, and
so he would be a priest, but hewouldn't be able to legally
practice the sacraments or tocelebrate the sacraments.
As I understand it, I did avery quick reading of Aquinas,
but Aquinas gave me no guidancewhatsoever on intersex.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
So are your rule books.
Are that helping?
Speaker 2 (48:47):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
If this were to happen, what would the church
say?
What would the canon lawyerssay?
Speaker 1 (48:54):
And we're no closer.
This movie brings us no closerto female priests, let alone
female popes.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Yeah, the only kind of reference to that was one of
the one of the factions withinthe Cardinals were like yeah, we
, the liberal side, needs to winand we gotta, yeah, make sure
that those, the moreconservatives, don't get the
next Pope or whatever, but thatwas the only.
Speaker 1 (49:17):
And that's a conversation for another day but
the dearth of priests right nowand how women are very often
doing a significant amount ofthe priestly types of work
without the formal title ofpriest.
Is there anything we left outthat we need to talk about?
Speaker 3 (49:34):
I'm sure we did, but we've got to end it sometime,
all right.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
We will end that now, then.
I want to thank you guys somuch for coming and talking
about it.
First of all, thanks for comingout and watching the movie too.
That was a fun evening and thiswas a fun conversation.
Well, I think that wraps it up.
I want to thank our audiencefor sitting around the table
with us today.
I hope that we have providedyou with some food for thought
(50:01):
and that we've given yousomething to chew on, but we
aren't done yet.
After we finish the music, wealways have some leftovers for
you to enjoy, additionalthoughts we share with one
another after we wrap up.
So feel free to continuelistening, and we appreciate
your support, and, as part ofthat support, please consider
subscribing, rating andreviewing Church Potluck
(50:21):
wherever you are downloading it.
And I didn't mention some otherthings.
Next episode, we'll mentionsome other things that are going
on behind the scenes withChurch Potluck, until we gather
around the table next time.
This has been Church Potluck,and thank you so much for
listening.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
All right, I saw Michael Bailey this morning and
he said he got a text from Lydialast night saying he had to go
see Conclave.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Is that right?
And I said visually alone.
You will enjoy it just for thevisual aspect 100%, and you said
that they're going to have towin for costumes.
Yeah, unless there's some othermovie.
Speaker 3 (51:05):
It's hard to imagine.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
But also, just, I don't know what the award is for
, cinematography or visual orwhatever it is, but it was
stunning to me and you are soright that the umbrella scene.
Did you notice in the umbrellascene that there was one person
without an umbrella?
Speaker 2 (51:22):
No.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
Yes, there was someone.
I was about to say he was anolder white guy that doesn't do
much good does it.
But yeah, one person andobviously that's intentional,
right, all these beautifulumbrellas just circling, and
there was that one person whodidn't and I was like, no, you
got to have an umbrella, butthere was, for whatever reason,
(51:45):
there was one guy without.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Even the stuff like the ribbon covering the door
with the seal, and that was verydramatic, especially when he
breaks it.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
When I keep referring to it as a slow movie.
How long did they take to showthem putting a seal?
But you saw all the detail thatwas being paid attention to
right and every aspect ofattention 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 sacredmoment of showing that there's
(52:20):
such a reverence for thesetraditions.
I really did enjoy it.
I thought the other thought Ihad in terms of visual, all this
beauty and then the cardinalsseem to be sitting at like
really regular tables.
Oh yeah, the tables need anupgrade, yeah it seemed like
1950s and just regular flat,long tables, and so that part
(52:41):
seemed to have taken away fromthe ambiance of the whole rest
of the room.
Speaker 2 (52:45):
Yeah, and I could never like figure out, like what
is the order they're going into drop in?
Is it like based on who's beenCardinal longest the senior
Cardinal?
Yeah, I couldn't figure thatout and I did not do research on
that.
Who's been cardinal longest thesenior cardinal?
Speaker 3 (52:58):
Yeah, I couldn't figure that out and I did not do
research on that Did Benitezvote last Because I assume he
would be like the junior.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
Maybe he's a younger guy.
Yeah, I don't know.
I did do research on how manycardinals were Italian.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
That sounds like a joke.
Yeah, I know how many cardinals217 out of 266.
Speaker 2 (53:21):
Oh, not cardinals, Sorry.
Popes have been from Italy.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
How many?
Speaker 2 (53:26):
217 out of 266.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
That was almost a given for many centuries, right
that the pope would be Catholic.
Usually they're Catholic, Ithink 267 out of 267 of the
popes have been.
Speaker 3 (53:40):
Catholic.
It is the sea of Rome, right,it's the bishop of Rome, so you
would expect, normally you wouldget an Italian in that position
.
But also, it's not just the seaof Rome, it's the.
He's the supreme pontiff of thechurch, 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 Catholicbishops should be eligible to be
(54:04):
the pope.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
Wasn't Benedict Ratzinger, wasn't he the first
German pope?
Speaker 3 (54:08):
I'm trying to think Was he the first German?
Speaker 2 (54:11):
All right, this says that there were six Germans.
Speaker 3 (54:14):
Oh, I guess not.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
I thought he was the first as well, but this says no,
there were others.
Yeah, I remember growing up mymy folks always saying there's
never going to be a pope fromthe united states, just never
going to happen, and I couldn'tfigure out why, like, why not?
Speaker 3 (54:31):
we're cool, not cool enough, that's right, apparently
not what I've heard is thatthey don't want someone from any
of the superpowers because itwould give too much.
There's always the fear that,wherever the pope is from, that
their country or theirgovernment is going to influence
them, and so it's okay having apope from a less powerful
(54:54):
country like Germany or Polandor Argentina, but not from the
US.
That's just too many people inthe church would find that, like
you've got, america has so much.
Why do you need this?
Speaker 2 (55:08):
That's when you said the most powerful philosopher in
the world might be JD Vance.
Speaker 3 (55:12):
I'm like huh.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
I wonder what is did Francis?
What was?
Was Francis a philosopher?
Like, yeah, I Francis aphilosopher, yeah.
So I assume I don't know, yeah.
Speaker 3 (55:20):
I know John Paul had a doctorate in philosophy and in
theology too.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
I assume Benedict did right.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
Benedict probably did too, but yeah, so now it
depends upon who's more powerfulthe Pope or the Vice President
of the US?
Speaker 1 (55:33):
You had mentioned Cardinal Lawrence's empathy and
sympathy, even in the midst ofhis doubts, I thought the way
that he told the African bishopthat he would never be pope,
that conversation showed just—itwas very touching, very just,
loaded with empathy and care andsympathy for the cardinal's
position, but also being upfrontwith him about what this means,
(55:55):
because of the scandal.
Speaker 3 (55:56):
Yeah, that was something that in some ways,
it's just imagining being acardinal and being involved in
this.
As you said before, I wasinvolved in choosing a president
for Perry College, but that'ssmall potatoes compared to the
Pope.
Speaker 1 (56:11):
Oh, hold your tongue, hold your tongue.
Speaker 3 (56:13):
If the Pope messes up , that's really bad.
So you have to be reallycareful.
Speaker 1 (56:21):
You should have recommended that you write down
your votes on pieces of paperthat then you pierce with a
string.
That would have been reallycool.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
And I do think it's good that they don't like so.
Mike told us at lunch the otherday that the vote for the
president is always unanimous.
Right For the president of thecollege.
It is always unanimous rightFor the president of the college
.
It's a unanimous choice thateverybody agrees.
So I think it's good that wedon't find out what the number
of people were for voting forthis guy to become pope either.
This is who the selection is.
Speaker 1 (56:51):
I think that's.
Oh, can you imagine?
Speaker 2 (56:54):
No, he barely got over it.
Speaker 1 (56:56):
Can you imagine what it would like to have a leader
who only had a small majorityand sometimes not a popular vote
?
Speaker 3 (57:02):
majority, but just an electoral, could you?
Speaker 1 (57:05):
imagine such a situation.
I cannot no.
Speaker 3 (57:09):
Yeah, and I think especially with the election of
the Pope, when, if you really dobelieve, as many of us do, that
there's divine action, going onthat the Holy Spirit is moving
the cardinals.
You don't want to underminethat.
Speaker 2 (57:25):
Who was not moved by the Spirit?
Yeah, who was not moved by theSpirit, exactly?
Speaker 1 (57:30):
I've got a story that I probably shouldn't tell, but
anyway, I was visiting a churchand they brought up someone who
was talking about this passionto start a new church, and then
the leaders of this church thatwas already in existence told
the congregation so we want youto pray on this.
But they said but we alreadyhave, we know how the Holy
(57:53):
Spirit should be moving you.
And it was very clear that theywere saying that we have
already determined what theright answer is here and I
didn't feel very good about that.
I'd be really curious and I'msure somebody has written on
this about what would it looklike?
How does God work through allthe political and all the
ambition, and how does God?
What is the kind of theCatholic understanding of?
(58:13):
Even though there's a lot ofpoliticking going on, how does
that fit in with the idea ofthat God's spirit is what is
actually directing all of this?
Because I think that would saysomething for all of us.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
I think I told you guys both as we were leaving the
movie that it reminded me insome ways the way they talked
about who should be Pope, of howwe talk about who should be
academic leaders that you don'twant somebody who wants the job
about who should be academicleaders that you don't want
somebody who wants the job asfar as a dean or a department
chair because it reveals toomuch ambition.
Speaker 1 (58:45):
Isn't that funny that in order to be ambitious, you
have to appear that you don'tfeel ambitious.
It's a paradox.
Maybe it's a mistake that Inamed my new LLC company Church
Potluck Media.
Speaker 2 (59:02):
Empire, you should be more humble.
Speaker 3 (59:04):
Maybe a little too ambitious, maybe yeah, yeah, all
right.
Speaker 1 (59:08):
Thank you all so much .
Speaker 3 (59:10):
Thanks, dave, that was fun yeah.
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