Is the Pope Catholic?  Which One?

The Two Popes a film by Fernando Meirelles.  Written by Anthony McCarten.  With Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Pryce *****

Can you imagine Donald Trump suddenly deciding the job is too much for him?  He hadn’t really intended to be President, he’d just wanted to establish his brand and go back to being a businessman.  Now he’s in over his head and wants out.  Not only that, but he has secretly known all along that climate change is for real (he was just saying otherwise to appeal to his base), he thinks abortion is okay, he always has, and he realizes that gun violence has gotten out of hand.  He’s also realized that billionaires don’t really need more money; how much, after all, can they spend?  So he calls up a progressive Democrat, let’s say Elizabeth Warren, lets her know he’s going to resign from office, and says, “I think if I resign you’ll get elected.  Pence is such a stiff;  my people won’t vote for Mike Pence.  Would you like me to do that?  Are you ready to take over if I resign?”

That isn’t exactly what happens in The Two Popes.  But it’s like that.

People have complained about this movie that the conversations that it dramatizes didn’t happen.  So what?  It’s fiction.  They’ve complained furthermore that such conversations never could have happened, that the whole thing is a complete fabrication.  But I would like to think that, in the religious world, which at the moment is almost as divided as the political world, within the Catholic church (which of course is vast, and includes a wide variety of opinions) two religious and spiritually aware people might be able to get together and discuss their differences, arrive at a place where they could co-exist, even if they still didn’t agree with one another.  If such a thing couldn’t happen, it should be able to.  One would like to think that, if anyone could do it, the Pope could do it.  Maybe even both Popes.

That is what Anthony McCarten has imagined, and Fernando Meirelles has beautifully directed.  And they have created an uplifting work of art, a mature work for mature people.  I would think that anyone, even non-religious people, could appreciate this movie.

It begins with the choice of Cardinal Ratzinger (Anthony Hopkins) as Pope, an occasion on which Cardinal Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce), an outsider, a man from South America and a political progressive, did get some votes.  But the church made a conservative choice, following one conservative Pope with another one, with a man who had been an outspoken conservative for years and had influenced his predecessor’s own conservatism.  Ratzinger, in this imagined recreation, actively sought out the office; Bergoglio was horrified at the thought that he might be chosen (but as another Cardinal says to him, “The most important qualification for any leader is not wanting to be leader”).  Even at the time of that first conclave, Bergoglio was thinking it was time for him to retire, go back to being a parish priest.  The reason he came to see the Pope, some years later, was to offer his resignation.

But the Pope, much to his surprise, had a vehemently negative reaction.  Bergoglio claims that his health is bad, he has a lung condition, but Pope Benedict points out that he’s had that condition all his life.  Benedict seems to be afraid people will regard the resignation as a protest against him.  The two men immediately spar over issues on which they disagree, homosexuality, divorce, what the sacrament is all about, the handling of sexual abuse in the church, even the way the Cardinal comports himself, and the shoes he wears.  They get that all out at the beginning.  Pope Benedict claims that his colleague used to be more conservative, that he has compromised his original positions; Bergoglio says he’s changed.  There’s a difference.

But the Pope has agreed to meet because he has something else in mind, something strange and unprecedented.  He has decided he wants to resign his post, partly, it seems, because of various scandals that surround the church, but also partly—and this is where Anthony McCarten’s imagination comes in—because he feels out of touch, not just with the world, but also with God.  He has spent much of his life alone but has always felt the presence of God, and also heard his voice (what he means by that I don’t know).  But in recent years, as Pope, he speaks to God and encounters nothing but silence.  And though he once thought that he couldn’t resign because Bergoglio, or a man like him, might succeed to the Papacy, he suddenly seems to feel, having met the man, that Bergoglio’s continued existence as a Cardinal might actually be a reason to resign.  Each Pope is a correction to the previous one, he points out.  He seems to think Bergoglio might be an apt correction for him.

I admit all this sounds unlikely.  I wasn’t sitting there thinking, oh yes, this could have happened.  I was thinking, wouldn’t it be wonderful if it could?  And I was enjoying these two great actors portraying these men, Pope Benedict, it seems, aging and weary and weighed down by the job, alone and also terribly lonely, bewildered, perhaps slightly demented; Bergoglio much more connected with the world but also convinced he could never be Pope because of a shameful moment in his past, when he tried to negotiate a military coup in Argentina by remaining friendly with the authorities, but thereby unintentionally betrayed some of the people and clergy who were closest to him.  There were still people in Argentina who thought of him as a traitor to the leftist cause.  But as he confesses all that to the Pope, the Pope becomes a kind of parish priest, counseling him that he can be forgiven, and giving him absolution.  Subsequently he, the Pope, asks if he can make confession to Bergoglio.  The two men, on different sides of every issue, absolve one another.

I’m not Catholic, though my wife is, and I sometimes attend Mass with her.  I’m at a point—especially with some of my most recent reading—where all such distinctions seem unimportant.  I’m with William Blake, as he says in an early work, All religions are one.  But this portrait of two spiritually mature men coming together and bridging their differences, talking about anything and everything and becoming friends, was extraordinarily moving to me, and demonstrates a spirit that we desperately need in today’s fractious world.  Yes we all disagree, and we want to rant and rave and go on and on about it.   But isn’t there something common to all of us, if only our humanity?

If the two Popes can’t talk to each other, who can?