This quote is from the uniquely well-timed 2024 film “CONCLAVE” about the selection of a new Pope. It’s haunted me ever since. Here is the entire quote and the clip from the film.
“My brothers and sisters...let me tell you that the one sin I have come to fear more than any other is certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity..our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.” ―Robert Harris, Conclave
CERTAIN: known for sure; established beyond doubt
ENEMY: something harmful or deadly
UNITY: a condition of harmony
A tidy package of CERTAINTY is rarely going to arrive on my doorstep.
How can I learn to manage my emotional distress when certainty isn’t possible?
• Don't believe everything I think, it's just a thought (NOT a fact).
• Acknowledge my feelings without judgment (or try to anyway).
• Accept that I may never have certainty on this topic.
• Remind myself of the rest of the quote:"...our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith."
Sunrise on Town Neck Beach—Sandwich, Massachusetts—July 3rd, 2025
While researching the history of my family something has become crystal clear. I cannot view my ancestors only through the lens of dates, births, education, marriages, deaths, census records, geography, and vocation.
All of our lives are lived within the context of what’s happening around us…economics, religion, politics, education, science, technology, art, and culture.
Currently, my research is focused on the 1920s and the cultural upheaval that occurred. I wish I could talk with my grandparents and ask all of the questions I now have about their experiences. What a truly fascinating time of change in American history.
Mildred & Ralph PiersolLouis & Doris Lillibridge
The changes of the 1920s…
Post WWII Economic BOOM
STOCK MARKET DOUBLED from 1920 to 1929
WOMEN’S RIGHT TO VOTE
FLAPPER FASHION dresses no longer floor length…FREEDOM
JAZZ was invented and DANCE styles changed dramatically
PROHIBITION led to speakeasy culture and bootlegging
MOVIES—SILENT to TALKIES
URBAN GROWTH with more people living in cities than on farms
IMMIGRATION from Catholic Countries was limited
AUTOMOBILES (1919—6.7 million on the road • 1929—23 million)
RADIO sales (1922—$60 million • 1929—$847 million)
DETECTIVE NOVELS flourished
OUIJA BOARDS & SEANCES were popular
SURREALIST ART of Salvadore Dali
MARTIANS many believed were sending radio signals
This was too much upheaval for many Americans…the world was moving way too fast and this was disorienting. There was a longing to return to a simpler time.
With that longing in the 1920s came the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.
My paternal greatuncle, Bryton Barron wrote this in the Sioux Falls, SD Argus Leader in 1924, “the KKK is a menace to American Liberty…by the spirit of intolerance and hatred upon which it feeds and fosters…in this light it stands condemned.”
Timothy Egan’s—A Fever in the Heartland was quite an education about the 1920s in America’s Heartland.
Here are a few quotes from his book:
“Fighting Irish” nickname was forever set by the clash of Notre Dame against the Ku Klux Klan on May 17, 1924.” (The KKK was very anti-Catholic.)
“He (D. C. Stephenson, KKK Grand Dragon) understood people’s fears and their need to blame others for their failures. He discovered that if he said something often enough, no matter how untrue, people would believe it. Small lies were for the timid. The key to telling a big lie was to do it with conviction.”
“These people needed to hate something smaller than themselves as much as they needed to have faith in something greater than themselves. The Ku Klux Klan “filled a need,”
“When the grandchildren of these leading citizens later discovered hoods in the attic, or membership lists that included their kin, they could not fathom how such a thing came to pass. They knew the Ku Klux Klan was born in the murk of blood-spilling hate, built around a racial order that would find its most ghastly expression in the laws of Nazi Germany.”
fork in the road • 2018 • Lisa Lillibridge
With the use of Artificial Intelligence, drones, information flowing at a dizzying speed, and a need to make sense of our rapidly changing world, perhaps we can somewhat relate to what folks were feeling 100 years ago.
I truly understand the desire to return to a simpler time.
However, we can’t put the genie back in the bottle. All we can do is choose how we respond to it all.
D. C. Stephenson (August 21, 1891 – June 28, 1966) was an American Ku Klux Klan leader, convicted rapist and murderer. In 1923 he was appointed Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan and head of Klan recruiting for seven other states. Later that year, he led those groups to independence from the national KKK organization. Amassing wealth and political power in Indiana politics, he was one of the most prominent national Klan leaders. -WIKIPEDIA
INTERVIEW with Timothy Egan:https://www.pbs.org/video/dinnerandabook-a-fever-in-the-heartland The Roaring Twenties --the Jazz Age -- the height of an American hate group the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and Indiana in particular. They hated everyone who was not white and Protestant. The man who set in motion the Klan's takeover of parts of America was a charismatic charlatan named D. C. Stephenson.
