No, I Have Not Seen "Conclave" I Have Every Intention To Not See It

I DON'T WATCH movies about the Catholic Church because they're either nauseatingly and dishonestly pious or sensationally and dishonestly anti-Catholic.    I never watch movies about real People because they are so unreliable and, so, inevitably bear false witness.  That didn't bother me until I found out in conversations online that many PhD holding teachers at accredited universities and prep-schools mistake movies for history or biography.  If they're so duped by Hollywood why should anyone expect those with lesser educations to make the distinction between reality and make-believe?   Make-believe is dangerous when it's mistaken as reality. 

In the many things I read and heard about the upcoming conclave and about the events leading to it, I was horrified to hear someone say how many People on their plane trip to go to Rome for the funeral of Good Pope Francis were watching the movie INCLUDING A BISHOP.    I mentioned how I suspected the putrid and pious and grotesquely unrealistic  "The Shoes of the Fisherman" led to the election of Karol Wojtyla as John Paul II -  a really bad papacy - so hearing that bishops were watching that movie put me on my guard. 

So far as I know, very little about what has gone on in any modern conclave has been leaked by a reliable source and what has leaked is often tainted by ulterior motives so I doubt much about it is accurate.  Much of the lore surrounding the elections of Popes is sensational and even more obviously ideological and polemic so it's mostly useless if you want to really know.   That is what happens when such a choice is made in secrecy by a small group of insiders - like the legendary smoke-filled rooms where presidential candidates of the major parties were said to have been chosen.   Of course, back then we got a few good ones whereas today good presidents are even rarer than they once were,  The well meaning democratic reforms of the primary system were more than swamped by the Courts opening up the airwaves to millionaires and billionaires flooding the American political system with lies so as to influence voters.   I don't think opening up the choice of the head of the Catholic Church to that would be likely to make things better. Imagine if the likes of Tim Busch and the media operations like EWTN and The National Catholic Register (NOT TO BE MISTAKEN WITH THE GENERALLY EXCELLENT NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER!) and their like around the world flooded the airwaves with American style lying.   

For some ideas of what might be an alternative to that but which is almost certainly not likely to ever happen, you might look at this piece at Religion Dispatches.   Much as I favor democracy as the only potentially valid means of selecting a legitimate secular government,  without major protections against the influence of lie campaigns and prejudice ruling, its capacity for producing better results drastically erodes.  There is no world-authority who could do that for the Catholic Church.  Hell, we can't even protect American democracy at home from it under our Constitution. 

As I said, we'll have to see what the Cardinal Electors give us.  If they give us someone at least as good as Francis was - and while I think he was a great Pope, he was hardly perfect - all well and good.   If they give us someone as timid as Paul VI,  as power-hungry and controlling as JPII or as incompetent as Benedict XVI (dear God, not another academic theologian!) that will be typical.   There have been remarkably few great presidents of the United States, even though we get a new chance to get a new one every four years.   There have been remarkably few great Popes though I think there have actually been a higher percentage of good ones than we've had good presidents.   Some of them like Benedict XV have been far better than they have been accorded by history (the late Richard McBrien convinced me of that) some have been downright awful.   Just like leaders in putative democracies are, it's a mixed bag.   

It's a lot safer and easier for movie makers to make a sensational and false movie about the Catholic Church than it is about secular politics,  the old idea that a Catholic audience is going to refuse to watch a movie if the bishop tells them not to was likely always exaggerated and is certainly not true today.   I don't care to watch fiction when I can read about reality.   I like fiction to be fictitious and not something that tries to risk rational people mistaking it for reality.  I've heard at least two people who believed "Conclave" informed about the truth when it is reported to contain nonsense - an unknown Cardinal presenting himself to the Conclave  as a Cardinal Elector when those qualified to participate have to be publicly declared by the Pope before hand and a Cardinal breaking the seal of confession - which would mean automatic and immediate excommunication if they did it and every other person in the Conclave would know that.   Lord knows what's in it that I haven't read about, yet. 

Here are words to live by,  which come from my favorite comedy series,  Corner Gas "MOVIES AREN'T REAL."