Conclave by Robert Harris

Capsule Review:

I've just finished reading Robert Harris' very stylish, sophisticated thriller, Conclave, the story of the struggle to elect the next pope in the post-Francis era. The time period is 2018. I have to say I was quite impressed on many levels. The author exhibits a superb understanding of internal Church politics, no simple matter,  and the difficulty of juggling so many conflicting factions in the RMC. He actually succeeds in making this strange, secret world comprehensible. I've read quite a few of this author's previous works and didn't expect this level of expertise and insight. Nor did I expect such spiritual insight, though given the maturity of his work in such novels as The Ghost Writer, perhaps I shouldn't have been completely surprised. Is Harris himself a Catholic, albeit a postmodern one?

All the major issues are handled adroitly through carefully drawn characters (change versus tradition, gays, women, divorced, the preferential option for the poor), from the brilliant, liberal 'periti' Cardinal Berlini to the fiercely homophobic African Cardinal, Adeyemi,  who believes that all 'homosexuals should be in jail on this earth and rot in hell for eternity.' Adeyemi is a major player in the politicking for the papacy, but he has a dark secret to hide. So do several other leading contenders for the papal throne and therein lies the suspense in this very balanced and mature thriller. There is none of the silliness and sensationalism of a Dan Brown here (think Angels and Demons -  which also deals with a papal conclave). The story is balanced, complex, and gripping and makes an arcane, peculiar, highly secretive world humanly comprehensible. Because looked at from the outside, the college of Cardinals - processing into the Vatican's Sistine Chapel to engage in a centuries old ritual of election - is bizarre in the extreme to any ordinary post-modern Christian.

Herein lies the benefit of Ron Howard's quite dazzling film adaptation of Angels & Demons - the sight of these elderly scarlet gentlemen processing in is beyond the weird. First of all because they are all male (and seem to think there is nothing peculiar about this), secondly those costumes, and thirdly all that color enveloping these tottering aged gentlemen. What is this all about a secularist observer wonders, and how could anyone take it seriously. And in what way could it possibly be relevant to the modern world. Harris has succeeded in humanizing the whole affair from an enlightened point of view, and that is much appreciated by this reader here. He makes us understand - particularly the dilemma - and the anguish - of open minded, mature clerics who love the Church and are struggling against such insurmountable odds to move it forward.

The first half of the book is taken up with a detailed description of the mechanics of any conclave and may prove daunting - if not boring - to any non-Catholic. However, Harris uses this mechanism to develop character, especially the character of the major players. Chief among them is the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Lomeli, who is a genuine man of prayer, and a person of unshakeable rectitude and conscience. This characterization is what stunned me. Robert Harris has succeeded in imaginatively expressing Lomeli's interior states of prayer, the darkness and the light, the surges of peace and interior conviction, followed by moments of doubt when "God" seems to be absent. The ebb and flow of the interior life. This is a poor depiction on my part of a very subtle and profound piece of characterization, and it led me to the question: is this Harris' own experience, is he also a man of genuine interior experience, knowledgeable  in the ways of the spiritual life (whether Christian, Buddhist, Muslim or-) . Or - as I suspect - did he have help in writing this book from prayerful, spiritual consultants, because some very high up individuals offered their input.

This spiritual dimension is what sets this book off from every other thriller I have ever read about Vatican scandals, corruption and intrigue. Finally, an author with genuine insight into the life of the spirit, without which all of this ceremony and ritual make no sense.  True, the prayerful individuals in this story seem to be in the minority - but they are there and they drive the narrative, and that is what makes all the difference.

Once past the half way mark, the thriller takes off with a number of interconnected plots and scandals, and the book becomes gripping and intense. . The ending is a slam-bang surprise that finally reveals the author's theological hand - exactly where he is situated on the left-liberal spectrum. Some readers have expressed their disbelief at the surprise shock of the ending, but it seemed plausible enough for me. This is partly because I have lived in Asia for some thirty years (no spoiler here) and am familiar with the ethnicity of the character who figures in the surprise ending. Keep that in mind, any readers who decide to take this on.

A class act all the way, the most mature Vatican thriller I have ever read, intriguing, informative and - a rarity - genuinely inspiring.

Cross-posted at my crime novel book review blog: CRIME SCENE REVIEWS.

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THE CHURCH IS EMPTY: MISSA PASCHALIS

Last evening I went to the beautiful church of St. Simon and Jude in Prague to hear a stunning concert performance of the Weser Renaissance Ensemble, one of the most sought after ensembles in the world specializing in early 16th and 17th century music. The performance piece was a haunting mass by Flemish composer, Heinrich Isaac, entitled Missa Paschalis, and the ensemble consisted of one counter tenor, two tenors, one baritone and one bass accompanied by a coronet and four trombones. I felt completely carried back to an earlier time in history and into a rare and wonderful sacred space conjured up by the rich polyphonic music. It reminded me very poignantly of how rich the Catholic spiritual tradition has been to so many who have been touched by it in a mystical way and that this mystery has been communicated most powerfully through the Eucharist and the Mass, as well as through the witness of such martyrs to injustice as Bishop Oscar Romero and the Jesuits massacred in El Salvador. In these terrible times of revelation, we have to remind ourselves that the Mystery still exists within the broken container of the institution, even though we are being painfully weaned away from dependence on the structures of authority. These structures have weaved such a tangled, corrupt and suffocating web around the Divine Mystery that it has become obscured to many. It is time for the structures to fall away and the loud noises we are hearing in the streets today, both the anguished cries of the abuse victims calling out for justice and the hysterical, high pitched denials of the Episcopal and Papal enablers, is simply the clattering sounds of the superfluous scaffolding falling away. The authority system, having proven itself defunct,  is simply no longer needed and must be dismantled, leaving the way open for a true reformation of the Catholic communion. It will not surrender its power of its own accord, it will not reform itself from within, so power and credibility must be taken away from it, thereby enabling us to experience the  Divine Mystery that still lives within the living community of the Spirit. This community will still have the responsibility to pass on the tradition and to still act as a conduit for the sacred mystery, but new forms of organization need to rise from the ashes. As the Old Catholic Church so eloquently witnesses (along with other Spirit filled breakaway communities), there are ways of being Catholic outside the control of the Vatican system.

This is why I thought it appropriate to experience this rich, deeply moving spiritual music in a church in Prague which has been de-consecrated and is now used as a concert hall. It's 'sacred power' has been taken away from it, the Eucharist is no longer reserved, and it has  simply become an empty shell of great artistic beauty, but devoid of that unique Catholic mystical presence. As I looked at all of the ornate decorations, the statues, the paintings, the crystal chandeliers, I felt Saint Simon and Jude had become an apt metaphor for the  present state of the Roman Catholic institutional and hierarchical system, a relic of the past devoid of sacred presence. As the scaffolding falls to the ground with a cacophonous clatter, the divine mystery is being set free, like an ecstatic  bird, soaring, soaring through the air on great white wings.
This morning I received this email comment from a close friend of mine which expresses how so many 'Catholics' are now feeling today about faith and spirit and life:

I continue to have moments of special warmth coming from somewhere... it feels like a combination of Christ and Ramakrishna... Christ thru Ramakrishna.
A few weeks ago I felt a cord cut ... a cord that made me feel tied to the Catholic Church... one that had guilt attached. Now, I feel the cord is cut and I am free just to be.
Something is happening and I am different.

Indeed! Something is happening, the cord is not only being cut, we are  not only different - but we are all so much the better for it. Alleluia!

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FINDING JOY IN UGANDA

In light of the terrible developments in Uganda and the Vatican's own scandalous response, which redefines the terms 'tepidity', 'duplicity,' and 'cowardice,' and raises them to new heights of human mendacity, (see William Lindsey's blog, On Bilgrimage for some particularly brilliant commentary-and for a more tempered view than my own), I thought I would offer this passage for meditation taken from the diaries of Etty Hillesum, the remarkable Jewish woman who died in Auschwitz at the age of twenty nine. Etty underwent a remarkable spiritual transformation in the final years of her life, reaching a level of interior peace and divine union (in the face of great evil and human suffering) which we are accustomed to seeing only in the greatest saints. In fact, one of the qualifications for canonization in the Roman Catholic tradition is the evidence of 'heroic suffering,' borne with patience, equanimity and joy. (Of course, one should add the virtues of prophetic outrage and resistance to evil to the list, and the ability to harmonize these virtues with the one's own interior peace and joy, but prophecy generally makes religious systems uncomfortable, whereas patience and equanimity, especially coupled with respectful obedience, do not.)

Dear God these are anxious times. Tonight for the first time I lay in the dark with burning eyes as scene after scene of human suffering passed before me. I shall promise You one thing, God, just one very small thing: I shall never burden my today with cares about my tomorrow, although that takes some practice. Each day is sufficient to itself. I shall try to help You, God, to stop my strength ebbing away, though I cannot vouch for it in advance. But one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me: that You cannot help us, that we must help You to help ourselves. And that is all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves. And perhaps in others as well. Alas, there doesn't seem to be much You Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold you responsible. You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last. There are, it is true, some who, even at this late stage, are putting their vacuum cleaners and silver forks and spoons in safe keeping, instead of guarding You, dear God. And there are those who want to put their bodies in safe keeping, but who are nothing more now than a shelter for a thousand fears and bitter feelings. And they say, "I shan't let them get me into their clutches." But they forget that no one is in their clutches who is in Your Arms....And the funny thing is I don't feel I'm in their clutches anyway, whether I stay or am sent away. I don't feel in anybody's clutches; I feel safe in God's arms, and no matter whether I am sitting at this beloved old desk now, or in a bare room in the Jewish district or perhaps in a labour camp under SS guards in a month's time - I shall always feel safe in God's arms. They may well succeed in breaking me physically, but no more than that. I may face cruelty and deprivation the likes of which I cannot imagine in even my wildest fantasies. Yet all this is as nothing to the immeasurable expanse of my faith in God and my inner receptiveness.  

I shall always be able to stand on my own two feet even when they are planted on the hardest soil of the harshest reality. And my acceptance is not indifference or helplessness. I feel deep moral indignation at a regime that treats human beings in such a way. But events have become too overwhelming and too demonic to be stemmed with personal resentment and bitterness. These responses strike me as being utterly childish and unequal to the fateful course of events.

It is not as if I want to fall into the arms of destruction with a resigned smile-far from it. I am only bowing to the inevitable and even as I do I am sustained by the certain knowledge that ultimately they cannot rob us of anything that matters.

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.

taken from An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-43

I read these passages this morning while celebrating the Eucharist in solitude on behalf of all the people of Uganda, but most especially our Christian/Catholic gay sisters and brothers in that troubled country who must be feeling particularly dispirited and alone at this point in history, in light of the response from Vatican leaders which is really an endorsement of anti-gay violence in disguise. The devil, they say, is the master of deceit and we have just witnessed an example of duplicity of a very high order, though that shouldn't render us incapable of gratitude for very small advances. As William Lindsay says, 

I am grateful for this tiny glimmer of sound moral insight. I am unhappy, though, that the leader of the Catholic church, whose voice could—and should—count when egregious human rights violations are occurring anywhere in the world, has boxed himself into a corner of silence. We’re talking, after all, about a situation in which people had begun to deliberate seriously about instituting the death penalty against those born gay or lesbian!

This is why I was particularly struck by Etty's use of the word demonic in the above passage. Though there seems to be some degree of 'rollback' from the more extremist view of justifying executions of gay persons, one can sense, I think, that this is more a tactical retreat for the moment, rather than a final victory. Dark forces are at work, and they will continue to weave their tangled webs for some time to come. And these demonic forces are at work at the highest levels of the church, and, no, I don't think this is too extreme a word to describe them. We are witnessing some very grave distortions that defy rational explanation, and these moral distortions go deep, very deep, into the psyches of some very dangerous and troubled men. However, to confront them and resist them, we must be grounded in our own interior faith and strengthened by our own spiritual resources of peace and joy which flow from our union with the Beloved within. Only then, can we face these dark forces with equanimity and joy and recognize them for what they are - the dust in the wind from dead men's bones. For all of their power to harm, ultimately they have no reality.

Holiness is the process whereby God changes our attitudes toward our trials and tribulations.  Father Thomas Keating~The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation.

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