By the Breath of Their Mouths: Narratives of Resistance in Italian America

2: Faith/Fede Plenty to Confess Women and (Italian) American Catholicism

2 Faith/Fede
Plenty to Confess WOMEN AND (ITALIAN) AMERICAN CATHOLICISM All saints are not buried. —Sister Blandina Segale, At the End of the Santa Fe Trail You were always irish, god,/in a church where I confessed to being Italian. . . ./O god,/god, I confess nothing. —Elaine Romaine, “you were always irish, god” Capitalizing only two words in her entire poem, “Italian” and “St. Anthony,” Elaine Romaine semantically diminishes the power of Irish domination and the conventional ritual of the Catholic sacrament of communion in her poem “you were always irish, god.” Romaine’s description of the annual festa also illustrates its association with patriarchy as only male figures (most likely Italian)—priest, father, uncles, and brother—are involved in the sacred outdoor procession. By the end of the poem, in an apostrophe of exhausted resistance, Romaine makes her own confession: “O god,/god, I confess nothing.” Overtly distancing herself from Church hierarchy, Elaine Romaine voices a loyal 39 40 By the Breath of Their Mouths dissension from a distinctly American incarnation of Catholicism, maintaining ties with an Italian cultural heritage that recognizes the sacred in the everyday: “And all the sights of you god,/were wine-filled.” Writers of Italian America regularly explore folk traditions and voices of faith as countervailing discourses vis-à-vis institutional practices of American Catholicism. As discussed in chapter 1, issues of justice often intersected with those of faith, rendering those most impoverished and silenced ripe for exploitation, but producing in them a worldview conditioned by ongoing experiences of oppression. Women writers of Italian heritage in particular respond with ambivalence and resistance to the institution of Catholicism,particularly in its belief in the subordination of women. While she admired the religious structures of the Catholic Church, including the liturgy of the Mass, Sandra M.Gilbert recognized that those structures “for so long and so nakedly embodied—and perpetuated—the assumptions and oppressions of a patriarchal culture that defines those of us who are women as secondary and inferior, indeed as basically vessels for the transmission of physical life” (“Foreword” xi). Women writers of Italian America capitalize on the fact that the American Catholic Church at times misunderstood and delegitimized Italian Catholicism,thereby underemphasizing the preeminent role of women to influence entire families.The Church’s scornful attitude hardly dissuaded Italian women from practicing their religion, even if they were not welcomed in the doors. As Linda Ardito points out, Italian immigrant women represented the link between home and Church. Unlike the men, who did not regularly attend Mass or abide by the doctrines or the liturgy of the Church,the women“represented the family in fulfilling such religious duties as hearing Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation, going to confession, receiving communion, and seeing that children received the sacraments and religious education. An Italian American woman’s position in this regard was so influential that Protestant denominations would appeal to her if they were to secure a possible conversion by other members of the family” (139).1 John Paul Russo, citing Robert Orsi’s The Madonna of 115th Street, identifies one of the central features of Italian Catholicism brought to American shores as the religion of the home, a concept tracing “to the Romans for whom religion begins in the home. . . . Centered on family relations and the casa . . . the religion of the family extends in concentric circles outward from the home to the neighborhood,city and country , ultimately to the natural universe” (“DeLillo” 13).2 A confluence of factors accounts for the difficult situation for Italian Catholics who came to America with their spiritual beliefs in tact. Plenty to Confess 41 These include an Italian Catholic popular religion practiced in Italy; the migration to America of Italian Catholics, making it second only to that from Ireland (Vecoli, “Prelates and Peasants” 220); and the response of the hierarchical Church in America to Italian immigrants. Make no mistake about it: Italian immigrants were deeply Catholic. Yet their devotional practices—in America—were perceived as unacceptable to the official Church. In his analysis of Italian Catholicism, Rudolph Vecoli explains that “the peasants [of the Mezzogiorno] were intensely parochial and traditional. While nominally Roman Catholic, theirs was a folk religion, a fusion of Christian and pre-Christian elements, of animism, polytheism, and sorcery with the sacraments of the Church” (“Prelates and Peasants” 228). Rudolph Vecoli echoes the sentiments of Carlo Levi, whose antifascist stance...