By CatholicVote | Created at 2024-10-23 19:23:11 | Updated at 2024-10-23 22:28:18
3 hours ago
CV NEWS FEED // The new movie “Conclave,” a fictional thriller about the election of a new pope, “is a mockery of our faith,” a Catholic priest in Indiana recently warned.
This film “is about eroding salvation, about mocking salvation, this is about discrediting the Holy Roman Catholic Church,” said Fr. Jonathan Meyer of All Saints Parish in Guilford, Indiana, in a recent YouTube video message.
Fr. Meyer decried various quotes from the movie, including one which he denounced as heresy. Further, in a subversive final plot twist, the movie also evidently disregards the fact that the pope has to be male.
The newly elected pope turns out to be a biological woman, who was “raised a man,” and “looks like a man,” Fr. Meyer said.
Fr. Meyer emphasized Church teaching that a woman cannot be ordained a priest. He referenced a 1994 statement from Pope St. John Paul II, who said: “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”
Fr. Meyer noted that Pope Francis, like Pope St. John Paul II, has been clear that he does not promote women’s ordination to the priesthood, but also has emphasized “that women have a beautiful role in the Church.”
Men and women’s “differences are good, their differences are beautiful, their differences are to be cherished and understood,” Fr. Meyer continued.
“This film erodes at, like so much of other content and media, it erodes at fatherhood,” he said.
Fr. Meyer highlighted that Christ ordained 12 men at Pentecost. He also noted that Jesus founded the Catholic Church and gave Peter the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 16:19).
“Since that moment, the Catholic Church has always had a visible head here on Earth, and the selection of that man is a very sacred and noble task,” he said. This task is “not something that should be mocked, not something that should be made out to be anything less than what it is, and that’s exactly what this movie sets out to do.”
He noted that having lived in Rome for four years himself, based on the trailer of the movie, the costumes and the sets seemed interesting, but he indicated that those are not sufficient reasons to see the movie.
“There has to be a point where you say, ‘Absolutely not, enough is enough,’” he said. “‘I don’t need to see ‘Conclave,’ and neither do you.’”
A professor writing for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ Angelus News also criticized the movie, which is based off of a novel by Robert Harris, as “a badly written, poorly researched, half-baked mystery that takes itself too seriously but turns at times into unwitting comedy.”
Stefano Rebeggiani wrote in his review of the movie that “It is so simplistic, ignorant, and shallow that it feels like it was written for an audience of 12-year-olds.”
Rebeggiani is an associate professor of Classics at the University of Southern California. Acknowledging the film’s anti-Catholic bias, he criticized it for being “just plain bad,” noting that it is filled with “a whole lot of cliches and stereotypes.”
When a new, mysterious so-called cardinal enters shortly after the film begins, Rebeggiani explains that it is evident who will be the next pope. While all the other cardinals “are corrupt and two-faced,” focusing on wealth and power, this new so-called cardinal is not, and rather focuses on those in need.
Rebeggiani also described a speech given by this so-called cardinal as “so full of platitudes it could have been written by ChatGPT.”
“I am not surprised that a movie so bad was produced,” Rebeggiani concluded: “I am surprised to see a respected cast of actors associated with such uninspiring material.”
In the recent YouTube video on “Conclave,” Fr. Meyer noted that “there are great Catholic films that are out there. There’s also films that are intentionally created to sow seeds of dissension, seeds of uncertainty, and with this, with the election of a woman [as pope], perversity, confusion.”
Fr. Meyer addressed those involved in making good Catholic media, and thanked them for their work.
“And for the great films that are being made, let’s praise the Lord, and let’s continue to support them,” Fr. Meyer concluded: “and let’s show the world that good films and good movies are needed and wanted, and let’s focus on the good. Amen.”
