PARTISAN REVIEW
is tempted to take a moderately skeptical, and moderately realistic,
view of human affairs. But realistic skepticism, especially of the
moderate kind, is an essential component of Italian Catholic men–
tality. Then, since moral and logical laxity seems to characterize
Catholicism in Italy, moralistic rigor and sectarianism might seem
more pertinent and more efficacious. But rigor and sectarianism re–
quire some sort of dogma, and how could a dogma be really anti–
Catholic in Italy? When one has received a Catholic education, like
me, one is made sensitive to such questions, and the difficulty of
finding an answer to them becomes very fascinating. That is why I
went to converse with Martelli, and submitted to such seemingly
unrewarding exercises as reading Catholic literature and carefully
scrutinizing papal Encyclicals. In a way, I was still looking for the
politico-intellectual move which would end the intricate game between
the Italians and Catholicism with an indisputable checkmate.
I left Italy in 1934, and did not go back until 1947. Meanwhile,
I heard regularly from my Jesuit acquaintance at Christmas and
Easter, when he would send me good wishes, prayers, and invitations
to prayer. I couldn't, in tum, resist the temptation to send him a
postcard from Madrid in August, 1936.
As
for Martelli's personal
history, I knew only that the Order had chosen him to be a parish
priest rather than a teacher, a scholar, or a publicist. That seemed
to me a sign that certain personal qualities I had known and appre–
ciated in him, and more especially a sincere evangelical spirit, the
desire to actually serve and help people (if he had not decided to
be a priest, I fancied, he would have become a communist), had
remained dominant in
his
character. During the war, I imagined
Father Martelli ministering to the poor, organizing relief, giving
one of those examples of self-denial that compel admiration and are
really what keeps the Church going, postponing time and again the
retribution which would otherwise be coming to her, as it comes to
other mundane outfits when they lay their bets on the wrong horse
(and the Vatican surely had gambled on Fascism with some in–
sistence).
Back in Rome, however, the first news I got about Father
Martelli was that he had become an eminent exponent of the trend
known as "neo-Fascism." A friend of mine had heard him preach
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