Conclave: When Faith Meets Doubt

 

You ever had that feeling? That cold finger of doubt that traces its way down your spine when something you’ve believed your whole life suddenly doesn’t seem so certain anymore? That’s what Cardinal Thomas Lawrence felt standing beneath the towering ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, staring up at Michelangelo’s damned souls being dragged to Hell by demons with grins like carving knives.

I watched Conclave last night. Couldn’t sleep after. Not because it was particularly scary—hell, there’s not a drop of blood or a single jump scare in the whole two hours—but because the real horror isn’t something that goes bump in the night. It’s the idea that the institutions we’ve built our lives around might be as fragile as a house of cards in a Kansas twister.

Ralph Fiennes plays Lawrence with the kind of quiet desperation you might see in a man who’s spent forty years building a dam only to notice the first hairline crack forming at its base. “There is one sin that I fear more than any other. Certainty,” he tells the assembled cardinals during the first day’s reflection. The red-robed men shift in their seats like schoolboys caught passing notes, their faces masks of practiced piety barely concealing the political calculations churning behind their eyes.

“Faith is something alive,” Lawrence continues, his voice echoing off marble that’s absorbed centuries of similar speeches. “Because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there is only certainty and no doubt, it can be assured that life has no mystery. And therefore, faith is no longer needed.”

Ain’t that the truth, brother. Faith without doubt is like a story without conflict—boring as watching paint dry on a Tulsa sidewalk.

Director Edward Berger takes us through the Vatican’s labyrinthine corridors like a tour guide who knows where all the bodies are buried. His camera lingers—Jesus Christ, does it linger—on the opulence of it all. Gold leaf and Renaissance frescoes, thick paper ballots and metal boxes that go tung when they close. The delayed gratification technique he perfected in All Quiet on the Western Front works even better here, building tension not with the threat of violence but with glances exchanged across the chapel floor that carry the weight of centuries of doctrine.

The whole setup reminded me of that summer camp I went to as a kid, where they locked us away from the world and told us to elect a cabin leader. By day three, Jimmy Petersen was spreading rumors that Bobby Milligan wet his bed, and Scotty Davidson had promised half his Halloween candy to anyone who’d vote for him. Adults ain’t much different, just better dressed.

These cardinals, quarantined from the outside world with their cell phones confiscated and signal jammers humming in the walls, are pressure-cooked in their own ambitions and fears. Black smoke billows from the chimney day after day while the faithful stand waiting in St. Peter’s Square, prayer beads clicking between anxious fingers.

What would Stephen King do with a conclave? Probably have something ancient and malevolent living in the catacombs beneath the Vatican, feeding on the cardinals’ ambitions. But reality is stranger than fiction, ain’t it always? The monster here is just good old human nature, as reliable as Dakota winters and twice as cold.

Lawrence’s internal struggle is the heart of the film. Here’s a man who’s spent his life serving an institution he’s beginning to doubt. Not God—he’s clear on that—but the Church itself. The conflict between traditionalists and progressives plays out across Lawrence’s furrowed brow as he stares at Michelangelo’s tortured souls. I found myself wondering what the painter thought as he lay on his back day after day, painting sinners being dragged to Hell while bishops strolled below critiquing his brushstrokes.

The political machinations of the conclave make the smoke-filled rooms of Chicago politics look like a kindergarten birthday party. Cardinals from Africa, South America, and Europe jockey for position, whispering in corners and forming alliances that last about as long as a snowball in July. Power doesn’t corrupt these men—they arrived pre-corrupted, marinating in ambition disguised as divine calling.

When the film veers into its most controversial territory—intersexuality in the pope’s genealogy—it’s like watching someone pull the tablecloth out from under the Church’s fine china. Everything goes flying. The foundations shake. Lawrence’s eyes widen like he’s seen a ghost, only it’s worse than a ghost—it’s the specter of a Church built on biological certainties suddenly confronted with biological ambiguities.

Vincent Benitez, the new pope who takes the name Innocentius (meaning “innocent,” and boy if that ain’t loaded with irony), is portrayed as a peace-loving, war-opposing symbol of tolerance. The scene where he blesses not just the cardinals present for dinner but also the marginalized, the forgotten, and the unappreciated, feels like a dream sequence—too good to be true in a world where power and prejudice are so tightly interwoven that pulling one thread unravels the whole damn tapestry.

The Catholic media condemned Conclave faster than you can say “blasphemy.” Bishop Robert Barron slapped it with the dreaded “woke” label, as if questioning tradition is some kind of modern sin rather than the thing that’s kept religion relevant for millennia. The Vatican banned it outright, which probably sold more tickets than any marketing campaign could have.

But beyond the controversy—and Lord knows, every film that questions religious dogma gets its share—Conclave offers something rare in cinema: a glimpse into the scared, doubting hearts beneath ceremonial robes. These men, with their zucchettos perched on their heads like little red satellites broadcasting to God, are just as confused and terrified as the rest of us.

Remember what Lawrence prays for? “A pope who doubts.” Because doubt keeps faith honest. Doubt is the grit in the oyster that forms the pearl. Without it, you’ve got nothing but empty certainty, and empty certainty is the real boogeyman, the thing waiting at the end of every dark hallway of human history.

As I watched the white smoke finally rise from the chimney and “Habemus Papam!” echo across St. Peter’s Square, I couldn’t help thinking about what the late Pope Francis said just before his death last week: “The Church is not tradition or the past. The Church is what humanity ‘does’ in the future.”

That’s scarier than any haunted house or possessed clown. The idea that we’re all just making this up as we go along, feeling our way through the dark, hoping there’s something more than void on the other side.

I give Conclave four out of five stars. It would’ve been five, but they could’ve used a good old-fashioned exorcism scene. Just kidding. Maybe.

Actually, I’m not so certain about that. And that’s exactly the point.