Despite being well aware that Italy is Italy and that not all observant Catholics observe all the parts of Catholic doctrine, this is still pretty shocking. Not that the case against Berlusconi for paying an underage prostitute and then abusing his authority to cover it up is being fast-tracked: crusading magistrates are a familiar part of the Italian political scene, though you might worry about the sustainability of their attempts to constrain the efficacy of popular decisions about who rules. Rather, and related to the concern about the clash between legal and more directly democratic procedures, it's that a
survey by the weekly Famiglia Cristiana showed only half of observant Roman Catholics were critical of his behaviour.
This isn't a little bit of marital breakdown where sympathy for those who've at least tried to make a go of it might soften judgments, nor is it all Italians, many of whom might describe themselves as Catholic without really ever attending mass. This is observant Catholics making judgments on - and this is only the sexual behaviour - orgies with hookers. Is there some part of orgies with hookers they didn't understand?
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6 comments:
I'm not surprised: late Catholicism isn't puritanical at all. Sin away, you can always repent at the last minute.
Besides, the idea of a filthy old man engaging in orgies with young female prostitutes is deeply patriarchal, so that will subconsciously resonate as being OK with Catholics.
Not to mention the implicit absolution from the comparatively minor sins of the average Famiglia Cristiana reader: "Well, surely if he does that and gets to be prime minister I don't need to worry about my affair with my secretary!". One Anglo-Saxon protestant's modus ponens is an Italian Catholic's modus tollens.
That's not quite my experience of Italian Catholicism, although I did know of someone who was living with their long-term partner and periodically attending confession. You wonder what they said to the priest. Still, I'm not sure that I was surprised rather than shocked. It's perhaps shocking despite entirely sensible to expect that soldiers do horrible things to captives in the absence of institutional forms and cultures which strongly tell against doing so. To take an Italian example, I am not surprised that Neapolitans appear to take San Gennaro associated-bullshit seriously, but it is shocking.
The other thing about Italy is that the Cold War never ended, and quite possibly never will. I was shocked myself when I read about Berlusconi doing the "salta chi non รจ comunista!" gag at party rallies ("Last one on his feet's a Commie!"), but I think it explains a lot. He may be a bastard - he may be a really creepy bastard - but damn it, he's their creepy bastard.
I'm not at all sure you're reading this the right way. When the article says that "only half of observant Roman Catholics were critical of his behaviour", isn't it possible that a large section of the half that were not critical are supporters who simply do not believe the stories?
From what I saw on the TV news this evening, Berlusconi and his supporters are claiming not that sleeping with underage prostitutes is acceptable, but that the claims that he did so are politically-motivated lies.
I suspect (and hope) that if the poll asked "is it acceptable for elderly men to pay underage girls to have sex with them?" then the response would be, overwhelmingly, "No". But if the poll asked "has Silvio Berlusconi acted improperly?" then the fanaticism of his supporters will lead many of them to insist that he has not.
Well, rudimentary Italian suggests that the results of the survey The Guardian reported were not ones motivated by ignorance. If 28% are feeling indulgent towards him, they think he's done something wrong. And at least so far as I can see from coverage, the denial of wrongdoing centres on whether the prostitute in question was underage. Paying prostitutes who are not underage is still paying prostitutes.
enzo,
Those are some pretty silly stereotypes of Italians and/or Catholics you are operating with there.
The interesting story is surely one about how people can so readily live with enormous and obvious cognitive disonance, and/or supress troublesome information that doesn't fit their established worldview.
I far rather suspect this is an interesting phenomenon that is replicated in varying forms and degrees pretty much universally, not simply a pathology of backwards Italians.
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