ArticleFriends were discussing the brilliant new film Conclave this week, and said they were surprised at how political electing a new pope is. I was surprised at their surprise.
One could argue, as I do, that any large-scale human interaction tends to involve politics – in the sense of trying to influence, manoeuvre, persuade and manipulate. That applies to a suburban football club as much as it does the United Nations.
And while one might think religion should seek to avoid internal politics because of the subject’s moral import, in fact it is especially intense there precisely because people think it is so important. Just look at the New Testament: why are the religious leaders so angry with Jesus and seeking to kill him? Because he is a threat to their authority – politics!
And no religious institution is more intensely political than the Catholic Church, both because of its structure and its breadth. It doesn’t always do it well, as victims of the Inquisition would attest.
Conclaves are all about politics, despite the insistence of the Church that the Holy Spirit oversees the result.
When I was religion editor of this august masthead, I went to Rome to cover two conclaves: the 2005 one that elected Pope Benedict XVI and the 2013 one that elected the current pope, Francis. It was utterly fascinating.
The eternal city’s population swells by about a million curious or passionate Catholics, hundreds of thousands of whom gather in St Peter’s Square to see what colour smoke will emerge from the Sistine Chapel.
Once a conclave begins the cardinal electors are supposed to be completely silent during proceedings (and thereafter), but Italian journalists had a huge advantage because many of their cardinals leaked like sieves. In contrast, Australia had only one elector, the late Cardinal George Pell, who probably didn’t speak to anyone but certainly not to The Age.
But he was known to have played a large role as a “campaign manager” for the deeply conservative Joseph Ratzinger (who won on the fourth ballot to become Benedict VXI) and was also a significant figure in 2013.
So I went to the film and thought it beautifully done in the main, but the ending (no spoiler here) stretched credulity.
My point is that politics is inevitable, and not necessarily wrong. People will always want to discuss matters with each other. Any attempt to avoid politics usually ends up itself being political.
It is well known that your allies have to get behind you if they are to stab you in the back, but at least Catholics usually do it with a veneer of courtesy – an example from which political parties might benefit.
Barney Zwartz, a senior fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity, was religion editor of The Age from 2002 to 2013. This article first appeared in The Age.