Church's gender revolution mirrored in film Conclave

The Bishop of the French diocese of Coutances and Avranches, Mgr Grégoir Cador, recently announced the appointment of a Vicar General, Audrey Dubourget, who will be attached to the Council of Bishops. In the Archdiocese of Brussels, an episcopal delegate, Rebecca Charlier-Alsberge, was also appointed in December, and her name was even mentioned in the Eucharistic prayer. In Italy, on the TV programme Otto e Mezzo (La7), it was the turn of a nun, Paola Arosio, to denounce US President Donald Trump's decision to consider only the male and female sexes, a decision considered violent and out of step with the times. On the homosexual and transsexual theories of the American Cardinal Blaise Cupich and others you can read about in this other article. And then there is the Pope, who between September and October received two different groups of homosexual and transsexual people with great fanfare, but above all to promote the LGBT etcetera agenda in the Church.

These are just a few recent facts - many more could be mentioned - that give an idea of how a real moral revolution is taking place in the Church. There is also a process underway that is distorting the priesthood.

And these are the facts that immediately come to mind after watching the film Conclave, directed by Edward Berger and based on the novel of the same name by Robert Harris, which was released last October in America and in Italy for Christmas, is still running in cinemas with notable public success. After all, we are talking about a film that has been nominated for eight Oscars, seven Golden Globes and many other awards. So when Oscar night comes around in a few weeks' time, it will be in the news again.

However, there would be no need to talk about this film if it were just another - albeit well made - film about discrediting the Catholic Church, with cardinals who are only interested in power intrigues or who have skeletons in their closets. Things we have seen before, you might say.

In reality, operation Conclave is far more devious and perturbing. All the ingredients of a Vatican thriller, however, are there: starting with the soundtrack, worthy of a horror film, which from the very first scenes accompanies the most ordinary and obvious actions following the death of a Pope, giving the impression of witnessing who knows what misdeed. Nor is there any shortage of scandals, which gradually emerge during the conclave and seem to remain locked away in the secret rooms: the African cardinal with a son and the Canadian who schemed and bribed other cardinals in order to win their votes. Then there are the two opposing fronts, progressives and traditionalists, strictly Western, obviously engaged in a simple power struggle. All this is spiced up with politically correct language in the rare main speeches: above all, the sermon at the Mass that opens the conclave, when Cardinal Lawrence, the dean who acts as a guide in the film's development, delivers a eulogy of doubt against all certainty. A doubt that he expresses in a moment of crisis of faith.

Until the epilogue, in which, after all the main candidates have been wiped out by scandal, the young suburban cardinal wins the votes for the papacy with a banal speech about the poor and wars. However, he hides the secret of a sexual nature that seems to be intersex, even if the description of him is a fantasy anatomy. In the end, the new Pope, with all his ambiguity and even banality, turns out to be the only truly positive figure in the Holy College, a man-woman who, by virtue of her nature, has the gentleness and inclination to dialogue - against the arrogance and violence of toxic men - that the Church and the world need.

In short, a plot, if you like, that is not even very original. So what is disturbing about this film? That what only a pontificate ago would have been considered a work of fantasy religion, such as The Da Vinci Code, now seems dramatically realistic. The speeches of the cardinals in the film, which lack any concrete reference to the reasons for faith, are terribly similar to those heard on the lips of so many prelates today, including the praise of doubt, "the Church is not tradition" and so on. Actually, far worse things are heard and seen in reality.

When one bishop promotes a blasphemous exhibition and another approves of fast food in church on the grounds that 'Jesus would approve', what do you expect from a cardinal obsessed with the fear that the traditionalist candidate will become pope? If you like, the reality exemplified by the facts cited at the top of this article is already a step ahead of what we see in the film. So much so that the election of an intersex or even transsexual cardinal as Pope is no longer a fantasy after the current pontificate.

The first thought that springs to mind on leaving the cinema is that this epilogue could be dramatically possible today, and one wonders if it has not already happened that a priest or bishop is in exactly this condition. Let us remember that only three years ago the Diocese of Turin accepted the confirmation under a new name and gender of a woman who had "become" a man; and one can be sure that elsewhere in the Western world there is no longer any scandal about such cases. The growing pressure in seminaries to accept homosexual candidates for the priesthood goes in the same direction.

In the film, the late Pope despite learning of the situation of the intersex bishop nevertheless makes him a cardinal, telling him to 'go ahead'. Is this not a situation with which we are already familiar? Have we not seen in recent years the brilliant careers of openly pro-LGBT figures such as the aforementioned Cardinal Cupich or Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, promoted in recent weeks to become Archbishop of Washington?

Finally, Conclave acts as a sounding board for those in the Church who are working for its destruction, making an epilogue like the one in the film familiar and acceptable to a wide audience, including Catholics.