When not in Rome…
The New York Times had a review of a new book on Italy and Italians today. The review began with this paragraph:
“In Italy, red lights come in many varieties. A rare few actually mean stop. Others, to the Italian driver, suggest different interpretations. At a pedestrian crossing at 7 a.m., with no pedestrians around, it is a “negotiable red,” more like a weak orange. At a traffic intersection, red could mean what the Florentines call rosso pieno, or full red, but it might, with no cars coming, be more of a suggestion than a command. It all depends.”
This is an approach to laws that most Americans have some difficulty with. People here stop at red lights even though it’s 2:00 AM and there’s not another car in the county, and would get a ticket from a cop if they didn’t stop.
I’ve heard the difference in culture applied also to Canon Law. “The Italians make the laws, and the Americans keep them.”
It aappears that the book’s observations are consistent with another description of Italians: the world’s worst organizers and the best improvisers.
The Italians also do not take the church too seriously. In fact they are rather contemptuos of it. I used to argue with my father and grandfather about this. My father said the church was a bunch of racketeers and my grandfather objected to my entering the seminary.
Today my opinion is……….
I think I have heard this story before. I do not know how reliable it is. The NYT reporters in Europe, when nothing else is on their minds, often come up with tales illustrating how comically odd the French, English, Italians, Germans et al., depending on where they are stationed. What they are displaying is often their own ignorance and/or provincialism.
I have heard this sort of easy-going attitude referred to as “Romanita,” I think, and have heard it blamed for considerable discomfort given to pious straight-arrow types who prefer having a very few, very reasonable rules they expect to follow. There is a belief, (perhaps a folk belief?) that those with a laxer view of their responsibilities don’t mind inventing a proliferation of stringent little rules they can happily ignore, and they find a certain pleasure in driving the straight-arrows predictably crazy with them.
Reminds me of the story aboiut how to distinguish between Canadians and Americans in Canada: Even if there is not a car in sight, Canadians will not step into a crosswalk until the “cross” signal comes on. Americans, as we all know, are already two blocks away by then.
Bill Collier, I’ve not heard that one before. But I do know, like Americans we stop in the middle of the night for red-lights. In fact I recall vividly an incident when travelling to Toronto at 4:00 a.m. back about 1957, when I approached a red light (yes, I had been speeding) at an intersection about a mile from then Malton airport (today called Toronto International Airport). I stopped looked saw no one coming in any direction and was about to speed through the intersection, when I looked in the rearview mirror and there was an OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) cruiser. He then played cat & mouse with me until we reached the Toronto city limits.Ah yes there’s areason we North Americans behave as we do!
In Utah, yellow always means: “Speed up! The light is turning red.” A friend from Idaho driving here was once rear-ended by a school bus no less because he began engaging his break and slowing when the light turned yellow.
Luigi Barzini probably wrote the classic on Italians in his 1964 book “The Italians.” His explaining of “bella figura” is priceless. Even the prostitutes in Italy were exceptional according to Barzini.
I’ll give this book a look but it will have to be something to compare to Barzini.
“Italians have always excelled in all activities in which the appearance is predominant: architecture, decorations, landscape gardening, the figurative arts, pageantry, fireworks, ceremonies, opera, and now industrial design, stage jewellery, fashions, and the cinema.” Luigi Barzini, The Italians
About 30 yeaqrs ago, I entertained a Belgian (Flemish) Norbertine. Whild driving him around, he asked me what the signs saying “35 Miles” or “45 Miles” meant. When i told him that they set speed limits, he replied: “That’s an insult to your intelligence. Surely you know how fast you can safely go.” I’m from Louisiana. He’s got a point.
And then there is the difference between Anglo-Saxons and Italians with regard to lines. “Mind the queue” has no Italian equivalent.
And then there is the traffic around the Piazza Venezia in Rome…
Susan, I hope Roberto Benigni reads your post. I can imagine the movie that might ensure, with him playing both the part of the lax rule-maker having a laugh at the expense of the straight-arrow rule-follower.
Maybe it’s the disproportional influence of Little Italy on the rest of the city, but my fellow denizens of Baltimore don’t have any problem adopting very Roman attitudes to red lights.
On a slightly more serious note, this discussion reminds me of John Allen’s editorial in the NYT in the run-up to the Vatican’s pronouncement on homosexuals in seminary. “At the Vatican, Exceptions Make the Rule.”
David Buckley was considerate enough to email me the John Allen article. I pass it on here in case you had the same difficulty I had. I think it is important.
“At the Vatican, Exceptions Make the Rule
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR. (NYT) 777 words
Published: September 27, 2005
Rome – THE forthcoming Vatican document on gays in seminaries will unleash a wrenching debate about Catholicism and homosexuality, but one thing it is certain not to mean is that in the future there will be no gays in the priesthood. The continued presence of gays in the priesthood will be the product not just of difficulties in enforcement, or the dishonesty of potential candidates, but also of design.
Although this is a difficult point for many Anglo-Saxons to grasp, when the Vatican makes statements like ”no gays in the priesthood,” it doesn’t actually mean ”no gays in the priesthood.” It means, ”As a general rule, this is not a good idea, but we all know there will be exceptions.”
Understanding this distinction requires an appreciation of Italian concepts of law, which hold sway throughout the thought world of the Vatican. The law, according to such thinking, expresses an ideal. It describes a perfect state of affairs from which many people will inevitably fall short. This view is far removed from the typical Anglo-Saxon approach, which expects the law to dictate what people actually do.
While Italians grumble about lawlessness, fundamentally they believe in subjectivity. Anyone who’s tried to negotiate the traffic in Italian cities will appreciate the point. No law, most Italians believe, can capture the infinite complexity of human situations, and it’s more important for the law to describe a vision of the ideal community than for it to be rigidly obeyed. Italians have tough laws, but their enforcement is enormously forgiving. Not for nothing was their equivalent of the attorney general’s office once known as the Ministry of Justice and Grace.
The British historian Christopher Dawson has described this as the ”erotic” spirit of cultures shaped by Roman Catholicism. Catholic cultures are based on the passionate quest for spiritual perfection, Dawson writes, unlike the ”bourgeois” culture of the United States, which, shaped by Protestantism and based on practical reason, gives priority to economic concerns. As one senior Vatican official put it to me some time ago, ”Law describes the way things would work if men were angels.”
This value system means that while Vatican officials often project a stern moral image on the public stage, in intimate settings they can be strikingly patient and understanding. Policymakers in the Vatican tend not to get as worked up as many Americans by the large numbers of Catholics in the developed world who flout church regulations on birth control, for example. It’s not that Vatican officials don’t believe in the regulations. Rather, they believe the very nature of an ideal is that many people will fail to realize it.
Of course, one can debate whether a ban on birth control, or on gays in seminaries, ought to be the ideal. The point is that although Vatican officials will never say so out loud, few actually expect those rules to be upheld in all cases.
Some in the Anglo-Saxon world see this as a form of hypocrisy: the church apparently issues laws while winking at disobedience. But Vatican officials view it instead as a realistic concession to fallen human nature.
On background, some such officials have said that the point of the forthcoming document is to challenge the conventional wisdom in the church, which holds that as long as a prospective priest is capable of celibacy, it doesn’t matter whether he’s gay or straight. Vatican policymakers and some American bishops believe that’s naïve. In an all-male environment, they contend, a candidate whose sexual orientation is toward men faces greater temptations and hence a greater cause for concern.
That’s a debatable proposition, but it does not add up to an absolute conviction that no gay man should ever be ordained a priest. Rather, it means that bishops should take a hard look at such candidates, but in the end, they’ll still use their best judgment.
Those determined to apply this decree in uncompromising fashion will be able to do so. But while the Catholic priesthood of the future may include fewer homosexuals — and it will certainly have fewer gay seminarians and priests willing to speak openly about their situation — it will not be ”gay free.”
On the ground, as bishops and seminary teams make decisions, many will still draw on that classic bit of Italian clerical casuistry: ”If the pope were here, he would understand.” >
Catholic life would be so much easier if we learnde that lesson from the Italians, the ones in the Vatican, that is.