From Doubting Thomas to Doubting Peter?

Ralph Fiennes is a remarkable actor. And if he wins an Academy Award for his brilliant performance in Conclave, this section of his masterfully delivered homily to the College of Cardinals, of which he plays the Dean, is likely to be cited frequently:

Let me speak from the heart for a moment.

St. Paul said, “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” To work together, to grow together, we must be tolerant, no one person or faction seeking to dominate another.

And speaking to the Ephesians, who were, of course, a mix of Jews and Gentiles, Paul reminds us that God’s gift to the Church is its variety, this diversity of people and views that gives the Church its strength.

And over the course of many years of service to our mother, the Church, there is one sin which I have come to fear above all others: certainty.

Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” he cries out in his agony at the ninth hour on the Cross.

Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and, therefore, no need for faith.

Let us pray that God grants us a pope who doubts….

No, let’s not.

We ought not pray that God grants us a pope who “doubts” that Catholicism makes manifest the truth of the world and its destiny, for our healing and salvation. We ought not pray for a pope who “doubts” that the name of Jesus “is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in Heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11). We ought not pray for a pope who does not grasp, with St. John Henry Newman, that “ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.”

We ought not pray for a pope who inverts the roles of Thomas and Peter such that Doubting Thomas becomes Doubting Peter.

Doubt is not the passageway to mystery. In the Christian understanding of the term, a “mystery” is a supernatural reality whose meaning can never be fully plumbed intellectually, but which can be confidently grasped in love. Nor is certainty “the deadly enemy of tolerance.” Ignorance, arrogance, and false belief are the deadly enemies of tolerance. Some of the most intolerant people in the Western world today are those who have abandoned any notion that truth can be known with surety, and who seek to impose their skepticism, relativism, and nihilism on everyone else through the coercive force of the law.

Nor is faith an irrational dive into the unknown, a psychological comfort blanket in a frightening world of doubt. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

And Christian faith is “a living thing,” not because it walks hand in hand with doubt but because it grows, as the grace of God and the use of our God-given intelligence drive us ever more deeply into an encounter with the mystery of God’s creative, redeeming, and sanctifying love. The living parts of the world Church today proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, with humility but also with boldness and firm conviction. The dying parts of the world Church wring their hands and offer the Gospel of Maybe.

We should certainly pray for a pope who knows his limitations and who understands that the charism of infallibility does not make him an oracle of wisdom on a myriad of issues. We should certainly pray for a pope who knows his need for sage counsel, who invites respectful criticism and squarely faces his errors of prudential judgment: a pope who does not govern autocratically. We should, above all, pray for a pope who kneels before the divine mystery as revealed in Scripture and Tradition, and who understands that he is the servant of the Deposit of Faith, not its master.

But a pope who doubts? No, thank you. Humility, yes. But doubt? No. A willingness to acknowledge the difficulties that many have in accepting Christ? Yes. But doubt that Jesus Christ is the unique savior of the world, the one who reveals the full truth about both God and us?

Please God, no.