Conclave

A Film to Challenge the Church

Feb 17, 2025

As this is a longish post, I have recorded an audio version should that be more desirable.

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I watched the movie Conclave recently and left the viewing just stunned by what I had witnessed. I will say right out of the gate that this post will give away the biggest plot twist, and it is a huge twist on which the whole movie hinges, so – spoiler alert. If you’re interested in the movie at all, you may wish to watch it and return to this post.

The movie itself was a cinematic joy. The color, script, music and the acting were all riveting. Of course, this is not the first movie about the release of the white smoke; the appointment of a new Pope. But this fictional telling is one of those movies that you need to watch in reverse, so to speak. Once the Pope is revealed it becomes important to ponder the movie in retrospect. You will notice, for example, the significant presence throughout, yet complete lack of dialogue from the nuns (until 2 key moments late in the film). The camera settles on their faces and you find yourself wondering what role they will play in the drama. At a pivotal point in the movie, Sister Agnes, played by Isabella Rossellini, speaks up amidst the sequestered cardinals and says,

“Although we sisters are supposed to be invisible, God has nevertheless given us eyes and ears…”

She then speaks a truth which silences the room full of men and accomplishes what Cardinal Lawrence, the man charged with leading the selection of a new pope, could not: she takes down the corrupt Cardinal Tremblay. One realizes, retrospectively, that the faces of the women and the looks on their faces were more than just a matter of asking What do they know?, but more importantly points to the fact that they do know, that God has given them eyes and ears but that the church has not given them a mouth to speak, or worse, has closed the mouth which God has given them in order to silence them. Every time they are allowed to speak, however, the truth which the men sensed but could not get at is unveiled by the women.

What I fear is that many will misunderstand the role that Benitez plays, at least as I see it. Benitez is Mexican, comes from Kabul where he serves, and – here’s the major twist – is intersex. Benitez believed himself to be a man his entire life until, later in life, he had a surgery where it was revealed he had a uterus and ovaries. He was going to have surgery to remove the female anatomy but decided against it. It is at this point that people might be tempted to too quickly praise or dismiss the movie as a simple display of a “liberal agenda.” Liberal, of course, can mean all kinds of things to many people, including, for some, the full inclusion of women in ministry. I think it’s important to note that the film, as I interpret it, is not making a stance on transgenderism. The reason this is important to note is that the movement is not from one gender to another, rather, Benitez serves as a symbol of three identities converging in a single body: Male, Female, Mexican. His refusal to have any part of these intersecting identities removed is significant.

Why does this matter? The most obvious thing to say here is that this is a critique on the male dominant system at play in Roman Catholicism in which women serve but are silenced. But this critique should be heard in all systems and structures of the church where women are the eyes and ears which, make no mistake, they always are, yet where men assume the role of the mouthpiece and of a deeply imbalanced power structure.

BACK TO THE GARDEN

The First Testament opens with two creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2 which I believe mark the intention for humankind which is well depicted in Benitez. It is a mistake, although an admittedly easy one to make (especially in an English reading), to read the text as being with the male Adam and then, eventually, the female Eve, formed from his rib. Such a misreading gives way to critique from many circles as it tends to paint Eve as a mere afterthought. While there are many critiques to choose from, I’ll quote Lynn White Jr., in his highly influential article from 1967 entitled “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” where he levels this critique:

“Finally, God had created Adam and, as an afterthought, Eve to keep man from being lonely. Man named all the animals, thus establishing his dominance over them. God planned all this explicitly for man’s benefit and rule: no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man’s purposes. And, although man’s body is made of clay, he is not simply part of nature: he is made in God’s image.”^⁠1

There is much to critique in White’s article (and many articles have been written for that purpose). I would like to simply point out that a more careful reading shows something else that is frequently missed. Genesis 1 speaks of Adam not as a gendered male, but simply of a human creature more generally. Gender enters the scene, but only later. In Hebrew, Adam means human, not man. The word for man is the word ish, and it is not until the second half of Genesis 2 that the word ish appears. It is important to pause and note that both of these words, Adam and ish, are about deep interconnection. Adamah is the word for soil, and Adam (human) is formed from Adamah (soil). Anytime, therefore, that we try and remove humanity from our connection with the soil we are in deep trouble. Genesis 1 teaches us this. The word ish teaches us a similar thing. In Genesis 2:23, after the first human is created from the second (in a very particular way which we’ll note below), the man – who, note well, only became man once there was a woman – is recorded as saying this:

This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’ (ishsha)
for she was taken out of man. (ish)

The first woman was formed from man, just as humanity was formed from soil. Everything is interconnected. It is worth noting a few things of import here, however. First, while it is true that the first woman was formed from man, the reverse is true and remains true for the rest of time: man is formed in and comes from woman. Second, it is vital to remember that man did not exist until the formation of woman, only the non-gendered human (or male-female if you prefer) creature (human) existed. Third, it is my view that the woman was not formed from the rib of the man but from the side of the man. The human, in other words, was split in two halves, one half man the other half woman. The word often translated as “rib” is the Hebrew word sela. Biblical scholar John Walton notes that this word is used around 40 times in the Jewish Scriptures, yet nowhere else is it translated as rib or even used as a reference to human anatomy. Walton explains that typically the word is used to refer to the architectural structure “in the tabernacle/temple passages.” He says that “it can refer to planks or beams…but more often it refers to one side or the other, typically when there are two sides.”^⁠2 And so Walton argues for the translation “side” over “rib.” As early as the late third or early fourth century Rabbi Samuel ben Nahmani was claiming that side, and not rib, should be used in translation.^⁠3 In most of your Bibles you’ll see that there is a little mark pointing to a note about an alternative translation for rib. If side is accepted over rib in translation, the two equal gendered halves were created from the one human (Adam).

The fourth thing to note is that only together as male and female do humans image God. Genesis 1:27 reads:

So God created human beings in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

God created the human in God’s image, but then the text insists that imago dei must be understood within the context of male and female. The two image God together.

THE MALE & FEMALE CO-PRIESTLY VOCATION

We do not have the space to explore this here, but it is my contention that the male and female humans were placed as co-priests in the garden.^⁠4 I will note in passing that I agree with Daniela C. Augustine’s summary of the priestly nature of humanity in the garden (and note how she speaks of Adam!):

The ontology of humanity, embodied in the first Adam (male-and-female [Gen. 1.27]) before the fall, is that of a community of priests in the cathedral of the cosmos, bearing the image and growing into the likeness of the communal Trinity amidst the material world. As a priest before God, Adam stands as the embodiment of the cosmic communion of matter and Spirit, representing…a sacrament in which the icon of the cosmos and the icon of God are united together as an evocation of the destiny of the world where God is to be all in all (Eph. 1.21).^⁠5

Such a view has fallen out of fashion. It has fallen out of fashion in my estimation because the priesthood is grossly misunderstood generally, and when speaking of humanity’s role in creation in particular it seems to be thought that priesthood necessarily falls within the rubric of anthropocentricsm. Again, we do not have time for a full treatment of this here, but it is my view that a proper priestly understanding is one of accountability, not power over. One need not have an anthropocentric view of the world to assign the category of priests to Adam and Eve. Two quick references help us here. First, Stanley Hauerwas notes that all the representative roles in Israel held within them, by their very nature, an intentional target for judgement:

Each of the major offices in Israel – king, priest, and prophet – also drew its substance from the need for Israel to have a visible exemplar to show how to follow the Lord. What was needed were people who embodied in their lives and work the vocation of Israel to ‘walk’ in the ‘way’ of the Lord. The king, prophet, and the priest were judged by how well they dedicated their lives to being suitable models for the people to imitate.^⁠6

Second, Maggie Ross, as she defines priesthood, has kenosis (self-emptying) as its center. Preisthood, then, need not be understood through the lens of power over as many theologians are tempted to do, but as a self-forgetfulness for the sake of creation. Here are Ross’s words:

the word “priest or priesthood” is used to refer only to the mirroring of God’s kenotic, self-forgetful love, which is irreconcilable, in human terms, with self-reflective, functional power, although one might dare to hope that when such power must unavoidably be exercised in the interest of minimal organization, it would be exercised with Christ’s humility in mind and always from the equipoise of response within that humility.7

Within that understanding, note well her critique of a male-only priesthood:

Self-effacement, self-forgetfulness, and humility are hardly the distinguishing features of the predominantly male clerical elite. Those who use the gender argument–and it is often in terms of a nontransparent image–are engaging in an exercise of self reflective self-serving self-importance, if not self-idolatry that is hubris. Their principal concern seems to be that all eyes be focused on them and not through them, as if they had some exclusive claim on God’s kenosis, not to mention questionably elitist god this self-reflection implies…These observations are not anti-male bias; they are pro-kenosis.8

A problem of a male-centric priesthood that goes far beyond the walls of the Vatican, as in Conclave, and in fact extends into the entire earth – the very earth in which “the first Adam (male-and-female)” where to acts as priests – is that we have lost one half, the female half, of the priestly equation. Interestingly, even Pope Benedict XVI reflects in his book on Mariology, Mary: The Church at the Source, that at the heart of many of our current world problems lies the fact that we have lost Mary.

in today’s intellectual climate, only the masculine principle counts. And that means doing, achieving results, actively planning and producing the world oneself, refusing to wait for anything upon which one would thereby become dependent, relying rather, solely on one’s own abilities. It is, I believe, no coincidence, given our Western, masculine mentality, that we have increasingly separated Christ from his Mother, without grasping that Mary’s motherhood might have some significance for theology and faith. This attitude characterizes our whole approach to the Church. We treat the Church almost like some technological device that we plan and make with enormous cleverness and expenditure of energy…What we need, then, is to abandon this one-sided, Western activistic outlook, lest we degrade the Church to a product of our creation and design.^⁠9

He further states:

Mary is the believing other whom God calls. As such, she represents creation, which is called to respond to God, and the freedom of the creature, which does not lose its integrity in love but attains completion therein. Mary thus represents saved and liberated man, but she does so precisely as a woman, that is, in bodily determinateness that is inseparable from man: “Male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). The “biological” and the human are inseparable in the figure of Mary, just as are the human and the “theological.”10

THE YIN & YANG OF THE PRIESTHOOD

The Pope does not go far enough, in my view, for nothing but a full recovery of the male-female priesthood together remains true to the intention for humanity as set out in the biblical creation narratives. Still, his point that the feminine is missing and that the results of this are disastrous is well taken. If we turn to our Yinist (Asian feminist) theologians, we face a further prophetic challenge towards the recovery of the male-female priestly imaging. Young Lee Hertig avers that what is destroying our planet (and I would offer many of our local churches) is an overwhelming emphasis on male (yang) energy. She writes:

“The yinist concept highlights yin, the Taoist feminine energy, over our current state of excessively dominant, masculine yang energy. Together, yin/yang is an inclusively woven both/and concept rather than an either/or concept.”^⁠11

She is not alone. Bede Griffiths, in the same vein as Hertig writes:

This may sound very paradoxical and unreal, but for centuries now the western world has been following the path of Yang of the masculine, active, aggressive, rational, scientific mind and has brought the world near destruction. It is time now to recover the path of Yin, of the feminine, passive, patient, intuitive and poetic mind. This is the path which the Tao Te Ching sets before us.^⁠12

One might argue if the definitions are too narrow (is passivity truly a feminine mark?), and Yin and Yang might be new language to some when speaking about the humanity from a biblical perspective, but it captures well the male-female humanity of Genesis 1, the the co-imaging in Genesis.

CONCLUSION

I fear that many conservative leaning folks who watch Conclave will simple dismiss the film as mere “liberal agenda.” They may still do so after reading this, and may dismiss me for the same reason. Similarly, I fear many liberal leaning folk will see this as a reification of their thoughts regarding gender, particular as it relates to transgenderism. Both miss the plot. The film is about two genders residing within the most humble person in the room (kenotic priesthood!) who happens to be appointed as the one to guide the priests into the future in a moment of unprecedented violence. My jaw dropped at the bold implications of such a move. The movie, of course, leaves many questions unanswered, not least, is it then only possible for a person who retains the masculine, such as Benitez, to serve as priest, or can women be brought in on their own accord and can we, male and female, serve together? Art is not meant to answer all of our questions but rather to leave us uncomfortable and to wrestle with such questions. As a symbol for a recovery of true priesthood with male-female together, I thought the film was not only good, but prophetic. It is a challenge to the church amidst the violence of our world (a constant theme during the discernment process of appointing a new pope, as the explosion of bombs kept interrupting them at key moments) to a kenotic understanding of power which can only be realized when the male and female (and let us not forget racial other) come together in full and mutual participation.

Theomagination

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