Not the Klan
The Good Guys
We have been trying to find a way to say something nice about the Catholic Church. Many of the people staffing that organization are sincerely well-intentioned and it seems a shame they should have to take any blame for the unfortunate pronouncements of the Pope – (here) and (here) – or even for his astonishing ability to be badly photographed – that is (here).
Unfortunately, the best intentions of today’s Church appear to have to do with dragging the faithful back into a dark past where the little people shut up, produce abundant generations of new believers and pay their tithes without kicking.
But we’re still going to try to go for less bad. The Vatican has just put out another letter of instructions to the world’s bishops on the whole pedophile priest question – which by the way doesn’t exist. The gist is that “collaborating” with civil authorities has turned out to be a bad plan – at the least extremely costly, and, worse, in some countries corrupt priests have even been tried, found guilty and punished: not something the Vatican expected. From now on these issue are to be kept secret and, if necessary, will be dealt with privately by clerical authorities. We’re not going to talk about that because it is depressing.
So instead we’ll try and have some fun with the headward flight back to the Middle Ages.
The hooded men in the photo above are, as we have captioned, “the good guys” – that is, if you are a certain kind of Mediterranean Catholic. For a long time, something like forty years, these costumes were more or less outlawed, at least where they were most common, in Sicily. It was a public order problem. It happened that, from time to time, people found they made great cover for carrying the sawed-off shotgun called the “lupara” – the “wolf gun” – in town. Best of all, you didn’t even have to put on a mask to use it. Just whip it out and “BLAM”.
After a certain number of Mafia massacres during the Holy Week processions in which the costume is worn, the police issued a decree forbidding their use. The Church of the time was broadly in agreement. In the Sixties and the Seventies of the last Century the Vatican still believed it could come to some kind of terms with the modern world, a policy it is rapidly abandoning. At any rate, the hoods, a shameless homage to the Inquisition – these are faceless “Christian Soliders” marching off to war – were then seen as a part of the past that modern Catholicism could well do without.
That is no longer the view. After heavy and insistent lobbying by ecclesiastical authorities, the Italian Ministry of the Interior – responsible for questions of public order – has decided that no real harm can come of going around in funny clothes. Indeed, the whole thing might even be considered a way of recovering an antique folk tradition…
The present Government – like any other, really, but this is the “old” Left – thinks folk traditions are marvelous as long as they bring the promise of votes. It might be noted that at one time Sicilian villagers also practiced the not so symbolic act of crucifying a member of their community as a way of celebrating Easter – not unlike the penitente cults still surviving – (here) – in some remote hispanic Catholic populations. No mention has so far been made of reviving the usage.
