Religion and Politics

You know the old adage. "Especially when among people you don't know well and at an otherwise civil event, the only two conversational topics to avoid are religion and politics."

Well, not in this part of the world. If there are any two things Italians like to discuss most, they are, exactly those: religion and politics. More specifically, they are the Vatican, and Italy's consistently tumultuous post-Berlusconian government (Berlusconi's tenure actually sidelined religion as a topic for argument for a while, but Pope Francis, it seems, is affording Vatican city a well-deserved and welcome, I think, comeback).

You know what? I say bring it on. Outside of Italy, talking about Italy most often means swapping stories about travels along the Amalfi coast, discussing classic recipes ("I've been perfecting my Amatriciana lately") and expressing (contemporaneously) awe at the richness of the country's contained and collected art, and frustration at the way its museums are run. Whatever. Let's roll up our sleeves and talk about Renzi and Letta. Why not?

It's systemic, this need to critique the country's inner workings at the hands of two of its historical strongholds, and it follows Italians outside Italy. All it takes is an encounter with other ex-pats to revive this discussion, which I have come to believe is inherent to Italian DNA. I met a number of Italians unexpectedly staying at the riad hosting my Moroccan travels last summer. Within five minutes of our shared dinner, it was abundantly clear to me what we'd be talking about that evening. To be fair, theirs was not a self-centered interest in politics, as can often be the case: like anywhere else in the world, Italians who have never left Europe often find it difficult to converse beyond their immediate threshold. My companions were curious about Canada's politics and governmental system, especially when compared with the infinitely more notorious American system. Still, the small-talk was kept to a minimum. Here we were, a table of strangers getting to know each other by way of our preferred political parties and the strengths and weaknesses of their platforms. To a certain (large) extent, in Italy, politics = identity almost as much as one's favourite football club does.

More recently, I hosted a dinner party (a Mexican fiesta, in keeping with an earlier post about cultural diversity here) mostly among people I was meeting for the first time. The topic of choice that evening was neither the nature of our work, nor our individual interests, our shared cultural experiences, or our common acquaintances, but paying the canone RAI, (essentially, TV tax -- look for more about this topic soon) and Pope Francis's "political" election as a Vatican city figurehead and rubber stamp. What's more, it came naturally to all participants (but me) and elicited a great deal of debate. One (though not I) might even go so far as to say it made for a successful evening.

Were I psychoanalysing Italians as a whole and on the basis of this generalisation, I might claim deflection, avoidance, fear of intimacy: talking about politics is the easiest way to avoid talking about yourself, making yourself vulnerable to your audience, or engaging on a more human level with those around you. But I know better. It's also the easiest way to involve most people present, since religion and politics are not only the two things everyone here has in common, but are often also the two things about which everyone can more or less see eye to eye. Because political inclination is so ingrained in Italians, it also affects the way they select their friends and significant others. I have yet to meet a politically polarised couple or circle of friends here. If you are a left-wing thinker, chances are, so are not most but all of your friends. If you are atheist, chances are, most of your friends display at least moderate skepticism in the Church. The contrary is true by default: walk into any Church, and you'll find a tightly-knit community that by definition excludes and even shuns nonbelievers and keeps largely to itself. Exceptions are few and far between. Unlike in the US where Republicans and Democrats can regularly, if not always comfortably, break bread, here the unspoken rule is: liberals among liberals; conservatives among conservatives; and, a step further, "alternatives" among "alternatives." The last category is usually composed of hippy types who are too far left to be included in the general population's political spectrum. There's always a separate neighbourhood for them; here in Florence, it's Oltrarno.

Historically, moreover, what we know today as Italy has, for centuries, been home to both the papacy and the Roman empire, and their power has been (and, many argue, continues to be) intertwined from the start. Few other cultures have been founded on such an overpowering coexistence -- America and Canada certainly haven't -- and while it's true that a country's politics is often fundamental to the integrity and interest of its literary and artistic production, the preoccupation with politics and religion in Italy has been constant and consistent from the Middle Ages onward. It isn't everywhere else in the world. Where some cultures' national literature will intermittently represent political concern with the rise and fall of governments, movements, and pressing social issues, Italy's fascination with and critique of its country's religious and political management starts before Dante and is still present today. All greatly revered Italian authors have dipped their pen in the ink of the Church and Empire. More recent ones may have done so by way of journalism -- Pier Paolo Pasolini was a regular contributor to Corriere della sera --, by documentary fiction -- Roberto Saviano and, before him, Leonardo Sciascia expose the underbelly of Italy's "illegal" (but widespread and just as potent) government --, in their memoirs and in privatised moments of their work -- Carlo Emilio Gadda intersperses his real life experiences of war in the fiction he writes. What unites them all is a common concern for the affairs of their shared state.

Having the Church and Empire at your door for centuries means having more opportunity to write about them, that's true. Canada has the Quiet Revolution and the question of language, both arriving at their peaks in the 60s and 70s (although it is experiencing a different kind of multicultural (quiet) revolution today); America has slavery and racial profiling. The difference is that America has its problems since 1776; Italy has had its own, and the same ones, for the most part, since 1200. Americans are more likely to talk about television shows or local events over dinner; in the regular season, and especially among season-ticket holders, Montrealers are more likely to talk about the Habs. Italians talk about Berlusconi's media censorship and the many ways in which the Vatican is stifling Italian social progress.

Argomenti leggeri, insomma.

Occasionally, they do take breaks, thank goodness, in the more familiar (to me) form of gossip and the elaboration of personal goals and projects. Put them all together, though, and for the most part, the evening's catchphrase becomes, "(Political Leader X), che vergogna!" (what an embarrassment!)

To a certain extent, better Political Leader X than me.