An Italian Way of Being Human

 

Because my Sicilian-speaking maternal grandmother lived with us in our Bronx apartment until her death (when I was 19) and because my mother's brother and sisters had all been Italian-born, I was well acquainted growing up with my Italian heritage on my mother's side. In contrast, my father and his sisters, while all also children of immigrants, had all been born in New York, and my father's parents were both dead before I was born. So I knew next to nothing about that side of the family's Italian experience, only that they had all grown up in Italian Harlem. I can clearly remember, when I was very young, taking the Jerome Avenue train to 125th Street to visit the one aunt who still lived on Second Avenue and 124th Street, near the Triborough Bridge, but she too soon joined her sisters in the East Bronx, and that was the end of my acquaintance with Italian Harlem. (Before moving to the West Bronx during World War II, my mother had grown up in lower Manhattan's "Little Italy." When she met my father, that was her first awareness of Italian Harlem.)

So it was with special interest - and a desire to connect with a family past that I never fully experienced - that I finally read Robert Anthony Orsi's The Madonna of 115th Stree: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 (Yale University Press, 1985). Orsi studies East Harlem's Italian immigrant community and its "popular religion," through the annual festa of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. (Although Italian Harlem was unknown to me, I was personally quite familiar with the Bronx version of that festa. La Madonna del Monte Carmelo was my mother's patronal feast, and every July 16 we went to the Italian Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on Arthur Avenue, where we attended Pontifical Mass in the morning and returned for the outdoor procession - and Italian ices - in the evening. But we attended as spectators who lived a mile or more away, not as members of the local community.)

Indeed, reading Orsi's book has highlighted for me how Americanized, how assimilated, we were in our largely Irish-Catholic corner of the West Bronx, despite speaking Sicilian dialect at home with my grandmother and listening to the Italian radio station with her. Yes, we had a strong sense of family and prioritized time with my aunts, uncles, and cousins, most of whom lived nearby and whom we saw regularly - not just on holidays but on most weekends and throughout the summer vacation season, when we frequented Orchard Beach and various picnic sites. We also visited our deceased relatives in the cemetery, another important feature of the Italian-American way of maintaining traditional connections in a decreasingly traditional world. But, while we shared the extended-family centered lifestyle which Orsi describes in such detail (using the Latin word "domus") with its many life-enhancing satisfactions (and also some of its more negative repressive features), we did so as Americans, very much at home in the U.S., and feeling much less bound by old-world expectations, even while preserving and cherishing some of them.

Orsi describes a much more total society, an almost enclosed community, through various stages of its history and the challenges Italian immigrants experienced not only to maintain their distinctive traditions but to achieve respect in a sometimes very hostile American and American Catholic world. Orsi's "informants in Italian-Harlem continually made a distinction between religion and church." The immigrants' ambivalent relationship with the Church  had its origins in la miseria of the Italian mezzogiorno. But it was exacerbated by the attitudes they encountered in America, in particular "resentment by New York City's Irish Catholics, lay and clerical, of their Italian neighbors so fierce as to constitute a Catholic nativism." 

Obviously, the travails of Italian immigrants at the hands of the local Church establishment did not go unnoticed in Rome. "The American Catholic hierarchy had offended [Pope} Leo [XIII] in the early 1880s by suggesting that Italian immigrants came as pagans to the United States." Orsi suggests that the subsequent Americanism crisis was in part connected with Rome's sensitivity to the American Church's ethnic conflicts (Irish vs. German-Americans, as well as Irish vs. Italian-Americans). The American situation also served the Papacy's interests in its ongoing battle with upstart kingdom of Italy. The Pope's "concern for the immigrants provided him both with an opportunity to demonstrate that the Vatican cared about the Italian people and with a chance to embarrass the government in Rome by showing that it cared for them more than the government did."

The chapters on family life in the Italian ghetto are richly descriptive and, from today's perspective, may seem both nostalgic and challenging - for subsequent generations must inevitably miss much about the richly textured familial way of life described, but also likely experience some relief at having been liberated from its intensity by assimilation. At the same time, the Italian immigrants' sharp critique of the very different values of the surrounding society may still speak today as we struggle with a kind and degree of familial and social breakdown that it would have been very hard for our immigrants predecessors to have fully anticipated.

There is so much richness in this book, which tackles so many disparate aspects of the immigrant generation's experience and that of the subsequent generations. We read about everything from why the Italians distrusted diocesan priests, but felt more positive about religious order priests and even more so about religious Sisters. We read about their ambivalence about crime. And we get insights into the political successes and significance of famous Italian-American politicians like Fiorello LaGuardia and Vito Marcantonio.

 

In his conclusion, Orsi recognizes how "The Italians brought an ancient religious heritage to the community along the East River; and the American Catholics of the downtown Church, dazzled by the prospects of success at last in the United States and embarrassed by this Mediterranean spirituality spilling onto the streets and into the awareness of Americans, might have learned from listening to the voices of the streets."

Hollywood's Happy Night

 

Hollywood's infamous Motion Picture Academy performed its annual celebration of itself, otherwise known as the 98th Academy Awards last evening (already dark night for those of us in the Eastern Time Zone).

Going into the evening, the big question for many was whether Sinners or One Battle After Another would claim Best Picture. One Battle After Another (which I had seen) had already won top prizes from the Golden Globes, Directors Guild of America, and BAFTA. Meanwhile, Sinners (which I had not seen) was setting a new record for the most Oscar nominations in a single year. It also won the Screen Actors Guild’s Best Cast award. So - something which is not always the case - there was a really clear competition for the biggest prize. If nothing else that may have created an incentive for more viewers to watch and to put up with the inevitable interminable boredom of the show to stay up to see which movie would win. At least it did that for me.

The declining popular audience for the Academy Awards and the Academy's desperate desire for a larger global audience may be one of the factors contributing to the decision to end the Academy's 50-year relationship with ABC and depart from broadcast TV to switch to an exclusive streaming model on YouTube in 2029. Host Conan O'Brien even tried to squeeze a comic routine out of that otherwise sad fact. While he performed creditably, I was left wondering once again whether the host is really necessary and how much quality - as opposed to wasted precious time - a comic host adds to the show.

The show did seem preoccupied with ending earlier - even to the point of occasionally cutting off some of the inevitable oversharing that passes for thank yous. Overly rich, overly entitled performers and their crews and "teams" have multiple opportunities to flaunt themselves. They need not be awarded so much of the general public's time!

In relatively good taste was the Memorial to the Fallen Artists of the past year, highlighting especially Rob Reiner, Diane Keaton, and Robert Redford. I appreciated Barbara Streisand's contribution about Robert Redford.

Inevitably, much of the evening played out as a competition between the two front-running movies, as each picked up its share of awards, while some others, e.g. Frankenstein did well along the way. In that department, I was really pleased to see Irish actress Jessie Buckley win for Hamnet.

Thomas Paul Anderson got to go up three times, which may have been a hint. Anyway, after hours of tedious preparation, One Battle After Another, with its superstar performances and quasi-contemporary themes, finally won Best Picture, producing applause on my part that a film I had actually seen had won for a change!

Apart from one unfortunate Free Palestine murmur, the politics of the evening was satisfactorily subdued. Jimmy Kimmel couldn't resist poking at some unnamed Voldemort and his wife. His best - and best received - such line was his probably his taking aim at CBS, lumped into the same category as North Korea.

All in all - for all its over-written length, its unflattering acts of self-promotion, its tiresome commercials for Rolexes and pharmaceuticals, and some seriously poor outfit choices - it proved to be a surprisingly good show - unexpectedly fit for purpose within the constraints of broadcast TV. I guess that Hegel's owl of Minerva is once again taking flight at dusk!

And the Oscar Goes To

 

Obviously, I have no idea which actors or what movies this year's Oscars will go to. Not only do I lack the requisite prophetic powers of prediction to pronounce to whom or to what the Oscars will go, I do not even know enough about most of the nominated movies and actors to guess to whom or what the Oscars should go. So far, i have only seen three of the Best Picture nominees - One Battle After Another, Hamnet, and Train Dreams (that last one not even in a theater, but streaming on Netflix). Both One Battle After Another and Hamnet, in my modest opinion, deserve the honor, as do the actors that star in them. But that is just my opinion and is offered largely in ignorance of the other films they are competing against, films I have not seen and likely will not see.

I guess that says something about me at this stage in my life. I used to see many more movies, and in the past I usually managd to see all the Best Picture nominees. Maybe it also says something about the changing dynamics of the film industry. I am not the only one who doesn't see so many movies anymore. When I do, in addition to the interminable trailers one has to sit through, the experience is further undermined by having to endure a commercial trying to sell me on the moviegoing experience itself. Of course, at that point I am already there, which makes me feel like the proverbial congregation being lectured by the preacher who is complaining about those who aren't attending Mass! More seriously, I guess that says something - something worrisome - about the perilous state of the film industry, which seems not to have recovered from the catastrophic consequences of the pandemic.

I commented on One Battle After Another on this site on October 1, 2025, and on Hamnet on December 27. At a friend's recommendation, I just recently watched Train Dreams at home on Netflix. The grand vistas of forests and trees so central to the film suggest I might well have done better to have seen it on a bigger screen. Even so, the beauty and the power of the film came across strongly - as well as the intense sadness of the story. Beyond the personal travails of its main character, there is also implicit in the story a saga of social and cultural loss - the loss of a certain way of life, the loss of simplicity and harmony with nature, the loss of a certain kind of American individualism that valued the good in others and sought to live in harmony with others, despite ethnic and other differences. It celebrates an older and simpler society - while recognizing its injustices and fundamental harshness.

I doubt Train Dreams will win Best Picture. Of the three I have seen, I would have to bet on One Battle After Another, whose actors also deserve awards - despite the reservation I expressed then and have expressed since, that right now this country could probably do without yet another film celebrating political violence!

Then again, I have not seen the other nominated films. So any guesses i am making are just that - ill-informed guesses! What will actually happen, we will just have to see.

House Divided

 

Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house (Luke 11:17).

When Abraham Lincoln famously quoted these words of Jesus, at what was then the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, on June 16, 1858, he was a senatorial candidate, his presidency and the civil war which characterized it then still in the future. When Lincoln quoted Jesus, everyone in his audience would have recognized the words and understood the reference.  Biblical literacy has declined enormously since then. So some may think Lincoln's words were original. Indeed, given the precipitous decline in historical literacy in recent decades, many may not recognize the quote or associate it with Lincoln at all, let alone with Jesus.

What Jesus said was supposed to be seen as self-evident. Division undercuts the unity necessary for a successful state - whether in a kingdom or nation or in a household.  The kingdom of God, of course, cannot suffer division. Jesus even goes so far as to warn us: Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. But earthly realities remain prone to division, as we all know. 

Theoretically, our connection with the Kingdom of God should bring us together and create an overarching unity that transcends and subordinates all out human divisions. But, again as we all know too well, such spiritual unity still eludes us. Lincoln had something to say about that too. In his Second Inaugural Address in March 1865, reflecting on four years of civil war, Lincoln famously said: "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. ... The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully."

In our own day, we seem to be divided as we have not been since Lincoln's time. We hear how families have been fractured and friendships forever ended because of political disagreements. And not only has our common communion in Christ not healed those division, those very divisions have penetrated into the life of the Church, so much so that for many Americans religious allegiances are reflections of - and even determined - by political allegiances, instead of the other way around.

We are accustomed to refer to Lent as a time of grace and reconciliation. That is a lot harder than it sounds. We all know - perhaps from personal experience - how hard it can be to reconcile quarrelling friends or jealous siblings, let alone unite a politically polarized nation or heal a divided Church. But such is the challenge of being Christ's Church today.

Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house (Luke 11:17).

Homily for the Thursday of the Third Week of Lent, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, March 12, 2026.

Communication Without Community

 

Byung-Chul Han is a Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Berlin's University of the Arts. His The Disappearance of Rituals: A Typology of the Present, tr. Daniel Steuer (Polity Press, 2020) is a short but complex critique of our contemporary "symbol-poor," neoliberal, narcissistic, commodified, consumerist culture. For Han, "rituals serve as a background against which our present times may be seen to stand ot more clearly." For Han, "rituals are symbolic acts," that "bring forth a community without communication," in contrast to which today "communication without community prevails." Rituals "stabilize life," through "their self-sameness, their repetitiveness." Rituals "bring people together and create an alliance, a wholeness, a community."

Han is particularly critical of the contemporary cult of authenticity., which he calls a "compulsion" which "leads to narcissistic introspection, a permanent occupation with one's own psychology." When "ritual gestures and manners decay, affect and emotion gain the upper hand." Hence, "narcissistic disorders are on the rise because we are increasingly losing the ability to conduct social interactions outside the boundaries of the self."

Rituals are not exclusively or uniquely religious, but religious rituals and their heightened form in religious festivals have obviously been a prominent part of human ritual experience. He examines, for example, the religious institution of the Sabbath; "when we subordinate rest to work, we ignore the divine." The silence of the Sabbath "gives rise to listening. It is accompanied by a special receptivity, by a deep contemplative attentiveness. Today's compulsion of communication means that we can close neither our eyes nor our mouths. It desecrates life." Unlike traditional religious festivals, "today's popular festivals have become mass events, and masses are not communities." he contrasts capitalism with religion. "Money, by itself, has an individualizing and isolating effect. It increases my individual freedom by liberating me from any personal bond with others."

Han challenges the prevailing conceit that modernity has been liberatory. Sketching what he calls a "genealogy" of rituals' disappearance, he pointedly interpret that disappearance as not "an emancipatory process." Our impolite society, it appears, has become a brutalized one. Han is hardly the first critic to make this case, although he does so in a very distinctive manner. His claims are quite sweeping, especially given the shortness of the book. Nor is it completely clear how, if at all, we can emerge from our present malaise. He explicitly eschews nostalgia and introduces his book by saying  it "is not animated by a return to ritual." yet obviously he is somehow trying to point the way toward the recovery of a shared dwelling in our divided world.