THE
JESUIT
one Sunday. The sermon was on the parable of the watchful servants
and what follows-how Jesus came to bring fire and discord to
earth, not peace (Luke 12:35-43). But the orator had spoken mainly
on "authority," and my friend professed to have been truly scared by
his ecstatic vehemence. The thesis was that authority is the supreme
manifestation of God's will on earth; in inner life as well as in public
affairs, Divine Truth reveals itself to man essentially in the form of
imperious command; where there is no authority there is no truth;
hence, the duty of Catholics in the present time is to pray and work
for the restoration of authority, which had been reduced to rubble
along with moral, economic, and national life.
Instead of being surprised by the news, I was struck by the fact
that such an appeal was bound to sound solemn .and inspiring in the
Italy of March, 1947. Even when they are patient with him, Italians
are basically contemptuous of the priest who falls in with the powers–
that-be: he looks superfluous and lackadaisical to them. But .a priest
who seems to go against the current, and to be free from temporal
bondage, will sound apocalyptic, and is sure to find an audience.
(One limiting factor, in the case of Father Martelli, was the fact
that his church was situated in a middle-class section: Jesuits don't
cater to the mob.) And as it happened, the Italians' newly recovered
freedom, although enjoyed by everybody including Fascists and Com–
munists, was generally felt to be either precarious or provisional.
Moreover, while the word "authority," with its derivatives, was offi–
cially taboo, and the fact, authority, practically nonexistent so far
as government prestige was concerned, the question of it hung over
everybody's mind, and found at best no definite answer.
The striking feature of post-Fascist Italy is how little Italy has
changed. To be precise, the Italians have refused to be changed by
events. They have refused to become bitter, somber, or niggardly.
They have kept up appearances as prescribed by one of the basic un–
written laws of the national behavior, a law which is founded on the
general disregard for .any clearcut distinction between appearances
and reality. There is nothing stoical
in
the Italians keeping up of
appearances, quite the contrary.
It
means a certain naturalness,
an unwillingness to curb normal human habits and incentives.
There is no emergency which justifies losing sight of the values
197
