As though a lamb going into a lion’s den, Pope Francis journeyed
to Sibari in southern Italy on the Summer Solstice of 2014 to castigate the
Italian mafia, and more specifically the Ndrangheta crime group, as an example
of “the adoration of evil.” He added
that “(t)hose who in their lives follow this path of evil, as mafiosi do, are
not in communion with God. They are excommunicated.”[1]
Under the pope's order, Michael of the fictional Corleone family would not be able to stand
as godfather to his sister’s child. In the film, Michael had ordered the murder
of his godson’s father, and various other such orders were being carried out
even as the baptism was taking place. Doubtless many viewers came to associate
the Roman Catholic Church is a “look the other way” stance even before the
clerical pedophilia story reached the light of day.
Ominously for Pope Francis, Pope John Paul had been the last
Roman pope to preach openly against the mob back in 1993. That pope died
shortly after becoming the pontiff. As The
Godfather, Part 3 suggests, that pope’s death may have been contrived by
the mob eager to keep the Vatican Bank free of prying reform. Asked in an
interview shortly before his trip to southern Italy about his relative lack of
security, Pope Francis said that at his age he had comparatively little to
lose. In his view, the members of the Mafiosi have a lot to lose in a salvific
sense.
In The Godfather, Part
3, Michael goes to the Vatican to speak to a humble Cardinal who would
become the pope who is murdered. During the conversation in a courtyard, the
priest seizes the moment by inviting the godfather to confess his sins. “I
always have time to save souls,” the cleric offers. “What is the point of
confessing if I don’t repent,” the mobster replies. “What have you got to lose?”
the priest counters. Finally, Michael confesses to having given the order to
kill his elder brother. Fittingly, the camera shows a solid pillar of stone
between the humble religious man and the man guilty of fratricide, and the
flowers may portend both the hope extended by the priest and the death of the
other man’s soul.
The formal words absolution, said in authoritative-sounding Latin,
is belied by what the priest himself says to Michael. “Your sins and terrible,
and it is just that you suffer; your life could be redeemed, but I know that
you don’t believe that; you will not change.” Before the confession, the Cardinal had
bemoaned the lack of progress that Christianity had made in Europe. Breaking
open a small stone that had been in a small fountain, the red-clad cleric
likened the still-dry inside of the stone to Europe, which had been immersed in
Christianity for centuries yet little had so far penetrated. So too, the
godfather, like his father before him, had gone through rituals in Church yet
the principles and values preached and lived out by Jesus had not penetrated
those two souls. Even popes have contravened even well-known principles, as for
instance the four who promised salvation to Christians willing to fight in the
Crusades instead of loving the enemy, turning the other cheek, and offering
even more to those who take.
Even though excommunicating members of the Mafiosi is
entirely appropriate and fitting, at least as long as they refuse to change,
the religion’s own pliability is itself a problem in need of an audacious
leader willing to speak truth to power, or dogma in this case. Jesus says in
the Gospels that he came to preach on the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, yet
even early Church leaders such as the Apostles have relegated those principles in
favor of attention on Christology as being the religion’s litmus test.
Clearly, daylight between valuing the
principles and believing the Creedal identity claim shows what must be a rather
loose coupling; for a Christian can act in ways that contradict the
deemphasized teachings without much fear of charges of hypocrisy as long as the
Christological belief is correct. I submit that precisely this fault-line
running through the history of Christianity is largely responsible for the fact
that the religion has not penetrated Europe in spite of a presence there for almost
two millennia. The “wriggle room” that exists between a cognitive assent to an
identity claim and valuing principles advocated by Jesus has also made it
possible for the Mafiosi members to regard themselves as Christians in spite of
violently contravening the principles and values of the Kingdom of God.
In The Godfather, Michael gives his
cognitive assent during the baptism ritual to the existence of the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, even as his murderous orders are being carried out
antithetical to Jesus’s principle of loving one’s enemy. Had the latter received
such creedal treatment from the outset in historical Christianity, perhaps Pope
Francis’s announcement of excommunication in 2014 would have been preceded by
many others directed against those who harass, threaten, and murder for a
living.
