On Conclave and the "Sin of Certainty"

Five Good Things for March

Last year, as the stomach flu tore its way through our household, a friend texted me to ask if I had ever seen the movie Conclave.

No, I texted back, after doing a quick Google search. I hadn’t even heard of it.

I spent the rest of that evening watching the film (and bleaching every discernible square inch of our home), only vaguely interested at first, then intrigued.

The film follows a group of cardinals who gather for a conclave in order to elect the next pope. Cardinal Thomas Lawrence manages this conclave at the request of the late pope and finds himself investigating various secrets and scandals, treading carefully among the theological and political factions of his fellow cardinals.

In what may be my favorite scene in the entire movie, Cardinal Lawrence gives a sermon to his fellow candidates. He begins his homily by suggesting, contrary to what many may believe, the church’s diversity of people and viewpoints is actually its strength.

He then continues:

“Over the course of many years in the service of our Mother the Church, let me tell you there is one sin I have come to fear above all others—certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity…Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a pope who doubts.”

One can see the astonishment on the faces of the cardinals as Lawrence finishes his homily.

As controversial as his words may seem, though, Lawrence is not advocating for some sort of sweeping relativism, here. Neither is he calling for the abolition of any certainties—the Creeds, the revelation of the Bible, or even the longstanding traditions of the Church.

Rather, he is speaking directly to those in his midst whose faith is built on a kind of heady dogmatism more than a living, breathing, reality. He is preaching to those who cling so tightly to their buttoned-up sureties, to their “one right way”, they squash the faith of others under their collective heel. He is talking to those in power who are complicit in perpetuating the disillusionment and isolation of those in their care.

Not surprisingly, TGC had a thing or two to say about Cardinal Lawrence’s speech. I no longer typically read TGC or its associated thinkers for reasons that are probably obvious; its think pieces like this one tend to be symptomatic of the larger whole.

That is, many conservative, evangelical faith spaces place a high value on a shared theology or idea, and make this the forefront of their ethos, often leading to an overwhelmingly homogenous group.

Of course, this is true for any space or organization built on ideology, isn’t it? Groups like this tend to squash, or at least not know what to do with, those who do not fit into the mold. This is the case for many churches, both conservative and progressive. It’s also true for faith organizations, companies, and certainly for political extremes—both right and left.

Any group like this will be opposed to a message against certainty, like Cardinal Lawrence’s, because it feels dangerous to its foundation—and perhaps it is.

Here is a distinction that may feel semantic but I’ve found makes all the difference between a living and a dying faith. Once you recognize the distinction, it becomes difficult to unsee:

If the foundation of our faith is the idea of Christ revealed through certain theologies or ways of reading the Bible and not the mystery of Christ, himself, then perhaps we are right to let it crumble. Such a foundation can not hold up to a full life of doubting, suffering, and change.

Christian Wiman explains it like this in his book My Bright Abyss:

“Life is not an error, even when it is. That is to say, whatever faith you emerge with at the end of your life is going to be not simply affected by that life but intimately dependent upon it, for faith in God is, in the deepest sense, faith in life—which means, of course, that even the staunchest life of faith is a life of great change. It follows that if you believe at 50 what you believed at 15, then you have not lived—or have denied the reality of your life.”

Perhaps faith is not really faith if it cannot and will not, in any way, be moved or impacted by our own lived experiences.

What is faith for if it only lives in our heads in tidy theological categories and biblical knowledge, and not in our hearts, our bodies, and the fullness of our selves?

This is the foundational underpinning of why, in the end, my faith would not survive in baptistic, theology-forward faith spaces, and why I’m now finding resonance and relief in ones that help me encounter Christ with my whole self—in ones that make room for mystery, nuance, and imagination.

There is something about being welcomed as a whole person, something about belonging to a people who hold a deep reverence for the limits of our understanding, something about Christ’s presence becoming somehow real through the sacraments that restores my withered faith, little by little.

At the end of the film, one of the cardinals says: “I know what it is to exist between the world’s certainties.”

And maybe that space—the in-between space—is precisely where Christ meets us.

Five Good Things:

1. Recent/Current Reads: I Cheerfully Refuse, Into the Deep, Orphaned Believers, and Make Sense of Your Story.

2. I read this gorgeous piece by

   Sarah Clarkson
   on deconstruction as a ripening, an enlargement, and the surprising and mysterious way Christ met her in a dark season.

3. I love everything

   Shawn Smucker
   writes. I found his essay On Being 48 and Crying a Lot refreshing and moving, as always. Can we normalize feeling everything, please? In that same vein, Ben Rector is helping us feel our feels, too.

4. Joe and I both watched A Real Pain recently, and it was stunning. I love a film that shows the complexity of people. We are not only one thing. I also watched Adolescence and it completely wrecked me and unnerved me. A shocking social commentary, not for the faint of heart.

5. I have only recently discovered how delightful Rainn Wilson’s podcast Soul Boom is. So funny, moving, and thought-provoking. I’m also digging into the debut podcast All the Buried Women, which tells the story of women in the Southern Baptist Church.

May each of us find spaces that allow a fresh open-handedness, where encountering mystery is possible.

Peace to you friends,

Krista