I\u2019m at a point in life where I have almost nothing to do with television anymore. That\u2019s quite a journey for a kid whose life revolved around the 7:30 \u2013 10 PM TV prime time period 7 nights a week. I don\u2019t remember spending a whole lot of time on homework in those days, because I had to get in my TV! Obviously I wasn\u2019t the best of students (until the last 2 years of high school, when TV started losing some of its charm). About the only time I see any TV these days is when I\u2019m visiting my brother on Friday nights. We go out to dinner, and then we hang out at his house for a while, usually with the TV on. But most of the time, nothing much of interest is on, it\u2019s just sort of a background noise generator.<\/p>\n
However, a few months ago, we decided to explore an interesting looking program icon for an HBO series entitled \u201cThe Young Pope<\/a>\u201d. The little blurb that popped up from the icon indicated that this was a fictional story about an American being elected Pope by the Roman Catholic Church. Given that my brother is still a fairly devout practicing Catholic and given that I am still a God-centric spiritualist who takes Jesus and his heritage (both Christian and Jewish) very seriously, we both gave the TV a lot more attention than usual on Friday nights. <\/p>\n Neither of us had done any research on The Young Pope, so we really didn\u2019t know what to expect. Being an HBO show that was produced and released within the past year or so, we did not expect TYP to be another \u201cGoing My Way\u201d (a sentimental 1944 movie<\/a> about a Catholic priest played by Bing Crosby, with a follow up 1962 TV series<\/a> with Gene Kelly). Actually though we were both probably hoping for something like \u201cNothing Sacred<\/a>\u201d, a short-lived 1997 series about an idealistic young priest doing the work of God in an inner-city parish while struggling against Catholic traditionalism. <\/p>\n But it turned out that The Young Pope was a whole new kind of animal. In a nutshell, the plot revolved around a relatively young American Cardinal named Lenny Belardo (expertly played by British actor Jude Law<\/a>), who is unexpectedly elected as Pope after the Church fathers get hung up between two popular liberal and conservative candidates. Belardo is seen as a compromise, but turns out to be more conservative than the older conservative candidate, Cardinal Spencer, who had ironically also served as Lenny\u2019s mentor. And more damaged and unpredictable. TYP producer Pablo Sorrentino decided to put as much weirdness into this show as possible without making going over the top in terms of credibility. <\/p>\n Also, a whole lot of sex has been added, occurring mainly amidst those professed to chastity before the Church. That might have seemed unrealistic back in the \u201cGoing My Way\u201d days, but today is pretty much expected. Some people have called this show a Catholic version of David Lynch\u2019s \u201cTwin Peaks\u201d series from the 1990\u2019s, which was celebrated for its off-kilter nature. “There isn’t a single moment in The Young Pope that’s not flamboyantly demented” per Rolling Stone Magazine<\/a>. One of the more innocently weird elements is the kangaroo that the new Pope was presented as a gift from someone in Australia, and which Lenny freed from its cage and allowed to live within the gardens of the Vatican, until it was mysteriously slaughtered in episode 8. <\/p>\n BUT … so much of that bizarre \/ quirky nature of TYP reflects real Catholicism, in all its ancient complexity, with all of its historical accumulation (accretion) of superstitious spiritual elements and traditions from the course of its 21 year history. Much from the Middle Ages has been retained and embraced in Church tradition and doctrine; so there is no denying the “absurdist” nature of certain elements of church doctrine, tradition and teachings. All of this is a fat target for satire, and it is surprising that it took so long for the cynical entertainers of today to get to it. <\/p>\n I\u2019m not going to recap the entire series; my blog posts can be very long, but it would take a small book to do justice to the intricacies that Sorrentino built into this short but very densely scripted series. I will assume that the reader is more or less familiar with the story arc as it evolved over ten episodes. If you are not familiar with the TYP story but would like to brush up on it, you can get a good episode by episode re-cap starting with this article<\/a>. <\/p>\n What I would like to do is to offer some comments and observations about how I reacted to TYP, what I noticed, and what it might ultimately mean, from my own perspective. Of course, I won\u2019t make this short, and by the end of this note, I will have reviewed a lot of the important events in TYP (but not all . . . still way too much packed into this show).<\/p>\n The ultimate theme of TYP appears to go way beyond a fashionable cynicism about worldly political corruption within the nerve center of the Church (although that is a big part of the plot, i.e. the Vatican becoming a caricature of House of Cards). The \u201cmeta-theme\u201d of Young Pope also transcends the sexual corruption on display, e.g. Cardinal Dussolier\u2019s mini-orgies, Cardinal Kurtweil\u2019s exploitation of boys and young men, and the super-nun Sister Antonia, who extorts clean water in return for for sexual favors at her African missionary camp. What really lies at the heart of TYP is the story of Lenny\u2019s long-lost vision of a wonderful, happy childhood, abruptly ended by his sudden abandonment by his \u201cfree spirit\u201d parents who abandoned him to a Catholic orphanage. <\/p>\n The underlying psychology infused by Sorrentino into Lenny, aka Pope Pius 13th, is his not giving up on his childhood vision, his continuing search for the reason why his parents left him, and for the abandoning parents themselves. It is Psych 101 that Pope Lenny unexpectedly becomes ultra-conservative after taking the reins of power because of his reaction against his parents choosing to purse a more hedonistic, worldly lifestyle without him. <\/p>\n Given all the weirdness and fashionable anti-Church cynicism in TYP, you would expect Sorrentino to mercilessly wield an axe against God and Catholicism. But that turns out not to be the case. One interesting and somewhat unrealistic point was the general lack of Jesus Christ talk amidst the Pope and the Church big-wigs. You don\u2019t hear much about Christ the Savior; most of the talk goes straight to God. In real life, every third word or so in the mouths of the Church leaders is about Christ. Had a real-life Lenny Belardo ascended to the throne of Peter and talked incessantly about God without any reference to Christ, most of the Cardinals and priests would become very upset before long, and possibly try to initiate whatever the Church might allow regarding a mutiny against an unhinged Pope.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s pretty clear that Lenny and Sorentino, want to move past Jesus and go straight to the question of whether there is a God or not. And that question actually occupies a fair portion of Pope Lenny\u2019s script. Sometimes he seems to be a firm believer, and at other times he sounds like a professed atheist. Which is strange in a way, because if anyone has reason to believe in God, it would seem to be Lenny. According to the plot, Lenny has triggered at least three instances of miraculous divine interventions because of his fervent prayers. This brings up another peculiarity about this show \u2013 if Sorentino is such a typically cynical modern writer and thinker, then why does TYP unquestioningly present what are apparently real live miracles? Was Sorentino keeping the door open to the possibility of God, and maybe also to the validity of a Church that puts so much stock in miracle stories?<\/p>\n In that vein, it is also interesting that Sorrentino kept Lenny immune to the mounds of corruption festering about him, both political and sexual. I have already mentioned the sexual indulgences of the Church princes in TYP, and there is likewise a whole lot of power corruption involving Cardinals Spencer and Voliello. But Lenny takes to two men who Sorrentino keep above both of these pitfalls, Monsignors Gutierrez and Tomaso (who Lenny later promote to full-fledged Cardinals). These are the good and holy men, those who keep the system from falling, despite their own bad habits such as alcohol abuse. As such, Sorrentino is giving us a cocktail blending modern cynicism and corruption with the possibility that there is still some inherent value and goodness in the Church, and in the struggle to find God \u2013 which of course which is metaphorically reflected in Lenny\u2019s search for the parents who abandoned him.<\/p>\n God and abandonment \u2013 in some ways we know in our hearts that God exists, and yet, the cruel realities of the world tell us that God is dead, or even if living has totally abandoned us. If that is true, then all of the Catholic Church, even its most sublime elements, is just an exercise in futility. It\u2019s all in vain. And yet, Sorrentino drops many hints that the Church may not be in vain. <\/p>\n For all of the corrupt, cynical or at best hapless Church leaders surrounding Pius the 13th, there stands out a mysterious old man — the ancient Cardinal Caltanissetta. Caltanissetta is also a bundle of paradox, with his oxygen mask and portable breathalyzer for an apparent lung disease, along with his frequent puffs on a cigarette. But Caltanissetta is the cardinal in the power circle who seems to retain integrity and true spirituality, the one who commands the respect of his fellow princes. He uses his influence to squelch the more Machiavellian plots of Voliello and Spencer, who wish to exploit the vulnerabilities of the Young Pope so as to bring him down.<\/p>\n Caltanissetta somehow seems to “get” Lenny, despite all the confusion and consternation about this young pope expressed by power-broker Cardinal Voliello (and the bitterly disappointed Cardinal Spencer). Recall the scene in an early episode showing Caltanissetta smiling when Lenny frees the kangaroo to roam the gardens, while everyone else looks on in stunned confusion. This reminded me of the Buddhist story about Gautama silently lifting a flower<\/a> before his followers, and only one, Mahakasyapa, smiling in response. So Buddha gave a special dharma transmission to Mahakasyapa, entrusting his teaching legacy to him. Since the Buddha was getting on in years, Mahakasyapa became his successor from that day forward.<\/p>\n Well, Lenny didn\u2019t give Caltanissetta anything special; in fact, there were few interactions between the two in the series. But in the third episode, Caltanissetta did confront the new Pope with a few challenging thoughts, and unlike his condescending disregard for most everyone else in the Vatican, Lenny just stood quietly before the mysterious octogenarian with the pointing finger and struggling breath.<\/p>\n An article in Variety<\/a> summed up what Sorrentino was getting at in TYP: \u201cGod\u2019s presence or absence, the bounds of holiness, how power can be wielded in an institution that preaches humility.\u201d In the end Sorrention and TYP do not leave God and the Church for dead. There is a faint but transcendent signal that tries to emerge, but that can be lost amidst all of the noise, amidst TYP\u2019s “entertaining weirdness”, its sexual entertainment, political intrigue, and the fashionable cynicism which the typical viewer will respond with.<\/p>\n That faint signal is a spiritual one . . . the notion that maybe God isn’t a joke, despite the perversions imposed by humankind when it attempts to institutionalize (and exploit) the popular instinct for God through religion. Lenny finally emerges as a man who has remained true to the church, someone untouched by scandal, someone who has maintained his chastity, someone who believes in prayer (and has a few miracles under his belt); and yet, someone who wrestles with doubt about God (despite his miracles), and with his own un-charitable nature. <\/p>\n As noted before, even the best characters in TYP have their Achilles heel. Lenny expresses his own through an insensitive intransigence, as when yelling at the nun who cries at her sister’s funeral, banning those who he doesn’t like to Alaska as punishment, his intentional humiliation of the cardinals (kissing his feet after his talk), his insulting the Harvard-trained Sofia, the \u201cmarketing guru\u201d, about the decline of her alma mater ahd her not being up on pop culture. And then there is his rigid anti-gay sentiments and his strict rule banning women who had abortions from forgiveness (can’t receive the sacraments anymore). <\/p>\n Sorrentino does drop a few hints in the final episode that Lenny is moving past some of his rigid faults, e.g. his appointment of now Cardinal Gutierrez as his personal secretary despite Gutierrez\u2019s admission of being gay. And he finally moves past his obsession with hiding himself from public view (which stemmed more from a desire to seem more mysteriously powerful and wise than in self-deprecating piety), giving a Christmas address in Venice during the light of day. But a bright future for a newly humanized Pope Pius is not to be. Venice was an intentional venue for the Young Pope\u2019s first photo op, given that it was the city where he was abandoned by his hippie parents. Might they still be there? Lenny brings a mini-telescope to the balcony, and after concluding his speech, he scans the crowd. And yes \u2013 there they are!!! Or maybe, anyway \u2013 when he looked twice they were gone (again the parallels with the fleeting mystery of \u201cGod moments\u201d). <\/p>\n But then Jesus finally makes his grand appearance! Pope Lenny, despite seeming to be in ruddy good health, has a bad cigarette habit. In an earlier episode, he fell down in a swoon \u2013 why? In the final moment of the show, the swoon comes back, this time with Lenny clutching at his heart and a cardinal ordering that a doctor be called. He falls down and looks up \u2013 and yes, there in the clouds is a possible but unlikely cloud formation \u2013 one that look unmistakably like Jesus!! (I guess that Sorrentino is riffing on \u201cOur Lady of the Tortilla<\/a>\u201d.)<\/p>\n So, Sorrentino ends the show in mystery \u2013 did Lenny really see his parents? Did he really see Jesus? Or was it all just an unlikely but scientifically feasible coincidence? Many modern people today have moved past such mystery. They live in a world of science and psychology, of rationality and results. And they look to intelligent writers and producers like Sorrentino for their entertainment. But despite the rationalist leanings of his viewers, Sorrentino refuses to close the door, to either God or to the Church. Yes, there is much suffering in the world; yes, even if there is a God, that God so often seems to have abandoned us. And yes, the existence of a sentient, supposedly-caring God does not line up with what our data on the universe tells us about it, as interpreted through the brilliance of our scientists and mathematicians. <\/p>\n