Once upon a time, certain movies would not have been made, the film industry having determined that the cost of production was not worth the outrage they would almost certainly produce.

In those halcyon days before the culture began in earnest its descent into darkness, certain standards were upheld, the violation of which even Hollywood would not allow. Not for disinterested reasons, mind you, but all the same, even the most mercenary of motives for making movies had to take into account an audience not yet willing to have its sensibilities under constant assault.

It was Hollywood’s Golden Age, a time when all the big studios agreed to honor a certain Production Code — requiring, for instance, that no picture be produced “which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.” The good and the true, in other words, must not be celebrated, lest evil and wickedness go unpunished.

And while the code was not explicitly Catholic, the fact that a Jesuit by the name of Father Daniel A. Lord had pretty much signed off on having written the thing, provided a moral template perfectly hospitable to the Church’s teaching, most especially in the area of sex and the family. “The sanctity of the institution of marriage and home,” it declared, “shall be upheld.” And all the Hollywood moguls, along with most of America, agreed.

But all that has changed in the last half-century or so, which is why so many of today’s movies are so wretchedly awful. Yes, there are oases here and there of movies one would not be ashamed to see but they are, alas, rarely shown. Meanwhile, the stuff all too routinely shown is often so tasteless and tawdry that one goes away feeling somehow soiled. And not just because so much of the sex and violence shown is gratuitously over the top, but owing to an implicit nihilism baked into the narratives themselves, which suggests that neither truth nor goodness can ever be shown to triumph in the end. Thus do audiences leave the theater so thoroughly demoralized and depressed by the time the movie is over.

It is the worst sort of corruption when, between truth and falsehood, good and evil, neither choice finally matters. Not all the Pepsi and popcorn in the world can compensate for the waste of an afternoon or evening spent watching a flick these days. “Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame,” is how Shakespeare famously put it in the pre-cinematic age, calling it nothing more than “lust in action … Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight.”

All this the world well knows, yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Now, it may not be at all realistic to expect the return of sanity anytime soon. Still, at the very least, we can call out the corruption when we see it, especially when it tries to disguise itself as virtue.

Have I got a movie in mind here? I certainly do, and despite eight nominations, Conclave was largely ignored at last night’s Academy Awards, winning only Best Adapted Screenplay. Ralph Fiennes’ performance as a progressive-minded prelate overseeing the election of a putative new pope — a biological woman who later transitions to attempt ordination and takes the name Innocent — wasn’t enough to impress even Hollywood.

As one critic described it, Conclave is “very silly, but wonderfully staged.” True enough, but still wide of the mark. Because what the movie really is, is an act of subversion, not only of the order of nature, but of grace itself, particularly the grace of Almighty God in giving us a Church armed with enough certainty that when she speaks it is Jesus himself whom we hear.

What the movie wants us to believe, however, is that it was not Christ at all who charged the Church with the authority to speak in his name, but that she had simply seized upon an authority she never had and, in their view, Christ apparently never had, either inasmuch as certainty was never his style, only doubt.

“Let me speak from the heart for a moment,” he tells the assembled cardinals, before going on to rip the very heart out of the Church herself. “To work together, to grow together, we must be tolerant, no one person or faction seeking to dominate another.” He continues:

And over the 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 faith 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 …

Doubtless a most dazzling performance, and one for which Ralph Fiennes will have earned his Oscar. But if the words he speaks are true, never mind the riveting way in which they are delivered, it becomes an invitation to despair, to that final doubt concerning the Church’s faith to vanquish the doubts that assail her.

“I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail,” Jesus tells St. Peter on the night of his betrayal, “and when you have turned again,” which he surely will when moved by grace to repent, “strengthen your brethren” (Luke 22:32).

With what exactly? Greater uncertainty?