A Reflection on Conclave: Holding On, Letting Go, and Looking Ahead

A few weeks ago, my wife and I sat down to watch a show that we see every year—the Oscars. One of the films nominated for eight awards was Conclave. I had heard about this film, but like most of the films at the Oscars, I had not gotten a chance to watch it yet. As we watch the Oscars, we often create a list of movies that we need to watch.

Conclave was next on the list.

The film follows Cardinal Lawrence Tremblay, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, after the death of the Pope, as he oversees a secretive and politically charged papal conclave (a meeting to decide the next pope). As the cardinals gather to elect a new leader for the Catholic Church, rival factions emerge, Cardinals compete for their election to the papacy, and personal ambitions are revealed. The film asks difficult questions of faith, power, and the true nature of leadership in the Church.

Towards the end of the movie, after much in-fighting and battling for who could get enough votes to be the next pope, Cardinal Benitez, in his frustration, rises and speaks to all the other Cardinals.

"My brother Cardinal, with respect, what do you know about war? I carried out my ministry in the Congo in Baghdad, in Kabul. I've seen the lines of the dead and wounded, Christian and Muslim. When you say we have to fight, What is it you think we're fighting? You think it's those deluded men who have carried out these terrible acts today? No, my brother. The thing you are fighting is here, inside each and every one of us, if we give in to hate now, if we speak of "sides" instead of speaking for every man and woman. This is my first time here, amongst you, and I suppose it will be my last. Forgive me but these last few days we have shown ourselves to be small petty men, we have seemed concerned only with ourselves, with Rome, with these elections, with power. But these things are not the Church. The Church is not tradition. The Church is not the past. The Church is what we do next (Emphasis added)."[1]

What Cardinal Benitez says here speaks to all Churches, not just Catholic churches. We (Christians) are always reaching behind us into the past and attempting to drag into the present what used to be.

To a certain degree, faith is about what happened back then. Christians every week gather to hear again the story of God through the Scriptures. We often think only about how God was moving in the past.

When we only see faith as a past event, God is not with us in our present. The gathered community known as the Church is to center on hearing the scriptures AND experiencing how God is actively moving in our world today. The Church is not about the past, instead, it should always focus on the movement of God today and tomorrow, not yesterday.

The hand that pulls us into the past is fear. It blurs our vision and blinds us to what is happening in front of us. We think, If we can simply recreate what once was then there will be no fear, and the Church will flourish again.

In the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene wakes early to go to Jesus’ tomb. When she arrives, Jesus’ body is not there, and she thinks someone has taken it. Then she realizes that the gardener, the person she is talking with, is actually Jesus. Wait, Jesus is not dead, but he is alive! Everything can go back to the way it was before Jesus was arrested, sentenced, and put to death.[2]

And yet, things were never going to return to like it was. Jesus knew that Mary (and everyone else) would seek the comfort and normalcy they had grown accustomed to, which is why he responds to Mary in this way,

“Don’t hold on to me.”[3]

No, no, no! We must hold on to you. We can’t let you go. Things must go back to the way they were.

The Church can’t live in the past. We, as the people of God, can no longer go back to what used to be. In the church today there is constant fear of more and more people leaving faith communities. “About 40 million Americans have left churches and other religious institutions in the last 25 years.” [4]

We are asking questions like: What does this mean? What will the church do next? How do continue to share the Good News as less and less people are showing up?

These are all critically important questions, but I wonder if instead of this leading to fear, what if it led to curiosity?

What if we saw today and tomorrow as a new chapter.

Jesus did not only say, “Don’t hold on to me,” to Mary, but Jesus is saying the same thing to us. The Church does not need to turn its head around to see what is behind it, but instead, it needs to look ahead and ask, How will we seek liberation and justice today? How does the Church love God and neighbor, not just back then, but more importantly, how do we do this today, right now?

What Conclave reminds us is that fear can bear-hug us and not let go. Fear calls us from behind, beckoning us to return to the past, to the way things used to be.

However, Jesus is calling the Church to not go back, to not hold on to the past, but instead to look to the future. The Church is what we do today, right now.

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[1] Conclave Movie. Conclave, directed by Edward Berger (2024; Universal City, CA: Focus Features Warner Home Video, 2024), DVD.

[2] See John 20:1-18.

[3] John 20:17. CEB.

[4] https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/01/24/the-great-dechurching-why-so-many-americans-are-leaving-their-church