THE ITALIAN ELECTIONS

...The Left as a whole (Communist, Socialist, and Far Left) won 46.6 percent, its highest combined total since the war...

...It was for this reason first of all that I became a worker...

...Given the crisis of capitalism in Italy and what seemed to be the inevitable break-up of the corrupt, scandal-ridden Christian Democratic party, most political observers in Italy and abroad expected these elections to confirm at the national level what had already taken place in local and regional elections a year ago: a strong advance for the Left, especially for the Italian Communist party (PCI), and a regression for the DC...

...Often one is not disposed to make room within himself for these words of our Lord: 'You shall not finish the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes.' And then too perhaps you have no idea of how dear being a priest has been to me...

...Priests are asked to give up everything and return to the confessional, and I, as by now very many others, can no longer bring myself to go to confession...

...By now two kinds of Christians have been formed, those attached to traditional values, and those inclined to live the faith in a way which adheres to the new reality of today...

...Just as you in reality do not resist the pressures of traditional Christians because deep inside of you you agree with them, so too I feel close to all those who are working for the emergence of new values which by now no traditional system can substitute for...

...Nor on the other hand is it possible to fail oneself...

...I became a priest when I was already an adult...

...The significance of the DCs comeback, however, lies not so much in the fact that it managed to remain ahead of the PCI, but that it was able to do so only by taking votes away from two of its traditional allies in the Center and on the Right, the Social Democrats (PSDI) and the Liberals (PLI...

...The results of these elections merit reflection...

...I thus give up my priesthood in the hope that my choice will be at the service of the needs of the collectivity and of the Church, and not, but also, in order to be, much more simply, true to myself and to what matters to me...

...I lived like the common people and no one criticized me for being a bad Christian...

...The first clear indication that the formerly conservative bloc of Catholic votes was beginning to disappear came two years ago, when Italian voters unexpectedly rejected the referendum for the repeal of divorce sponsored by the Vatican and the Christian Democrats...

...In this articulation of the Church, in which the clergy solidly chose traditional positions, my personal problem became one of deciding on whose side I stood...

...Ironically, it is above all the development of capitalism itself that has destroyed the socio-economic base of religious conservatism here...

...And, significantly, not only did a number of prominent Catholic intellectuals run as independent candidates on the PCI's ticket in these elections, but for the first time priests themselves publicly supported parties on the Left...

...to a spiritual power, finally, which does not support vested interests, but which finds its own reason for being in defending social outcasts: today prisoners, homosexuals, subproletarians, deviants, those who cannot bring themselves to work, tomorrow those who will be new scapegoats...

...Farmers became industrial workers, joined unions, and began to struggle in the factories for higher wages and better working conditions...

...In this regard it is interesting to note that a reporter who made a point of listening to sermons in churches in Rome on Sunday morning, June 20, the first day of the elections, wrote in the widely-read Corriere della sera that he didn't hear one anti-Communist sermon...

...These are traditionally bourgeois and petty bourgeois lay parties which for years have been completely subordinate to and at times indistinguishable from the DC in their politics and programs...

...Instance of Ferment The following letter, which appeared in the June 17 edition of the New Left newspaper il manifesto, gives some idea of the degree to which a concern for social justice and a desire to work actively for a socialist society are fermenting within the Italian clergy...

...to the battle against social stratification...

...With this letter, which is public, just as to be or not to be a priest is public, I ask you to count me among all those Christians who are looking for new and different paths...

...to women's winning their own identity...

...Monsignore, six years ago I realized that my faith would not last if I continued to breathe the closed air stagnating in the parishes and Catholic organizations after the Council, and it seemed to me that as a catholic priest, that is, as everyone's priest, my place was with the masses, with the people, with those who were baptized but no longer practicing Catholics...

...What the results of these recent parliamentary elections now confirm is that to be a Catholic no longer means that one must be anti-Communist...

...The Italian bourgeoisie threw its weight fully behind the DC, even at the risk of compromising the political futures of the PSDI and the PLI, since it saw in the DC the only force capable of stopping the expected Communist advance...

...Monsignore, I am not writing you this to scandalize you or as some stupid form of boasting...

...But now, as the final blow, it is the Pope himself who declares that those of us who run as independent candidates on the PCI's electoral ticket separate ourselves from the Church and I, who believe I must define myself a Communist, and who, having no need for Catholic candidates, will vote PCI for the Senate and Proletarian Democracy for the Chamber of Deputies...

...It is because I have faith in telling the truth, and if I maintain that it is necessary to recognize openly the existence of two different ways of conceiving what it means to be a Christian, it is because, among other things, this seems to me the only way of avoiding irreparable damage...

...In the final analysis, not only does Catholicism no longer provide a reliable ideological bulwark from behind which the Vatican, the Christian Democratic party, and Italian capitalists can try to preserve the status quo, but the desire of many Italian Catholics to live the Gospel in today's world is itself becoming a growing force for social change...

...to the elderly's right to maintain an active role in society even when retired...

...to children, who must not be treated as things or cute little animals any longer, but as human beings right from the beginning...

...It is an open letter Father Sandro Vesce wrote to the Bishop of Mo-dena...

...to the freedom of the young not to be indoctrinated and put down...

...In it Father Vesce announces his intention to leave the priesthood and to vote for Proletarian Democracy (Democrazia proletaria), a unified electoral slate of candidates from the three major Far-Left parties in Italy...

...Once again the Church has issued repressive decrees concerning sex, and I, who live in the midst of today's young men and women, have always thought that we had a lot to learn from their free attitudes, and never gave any of them reasons to be troubled about their morals...

...This bloc of Catholic votes no longer exists as such, for in these elections Italians tended to vote according to class interest, not religious affiliation...

...The rapid growth of the big export-oriented industries after the war slowly moved the poor peasant masses out of the Southern countryside and into the big industrial cities of the North...

...Until a little while ago I was under the illusion or perhaps things weren't so bad that we could all proceed ahead together, even if with great difficulty...

...And in the factories and the cities they lost their rural resignation and respect for authority...

...So the Council did count for something...

...But I never considered it an absolute, for it is against the faith to have idols to burn incense to...

...If we deceive ourselves into believing that between the two ways of being a Christian there does not exist a profound difference of feeling and experience, and if you continue to outlaw dissidents and we continue to conceive of your form which we don't like as the only form in which Christianity lives, then truly a very serious situation will have arisen, and the Church will be infinitely impoverished...

...Finally, progressive elements within the Church itself doubtlessly stimulated a growing dialogue between Marxism and Christianity...

...In fact, the commandment is 'love your neighbor as yourself,' not 'love your neighbor,' as it is usually read...

...To be a Catholic no longer meant to vote according to the wishes of the Church or for the DC...

...But the DC, to the surprise of many, polled 38.7 percent, thereby making up its losses from last year (when it fell to 35.5 percent) and maintaining the same percentage of votes it had won four years ago...

...There are both socio-economic and ideological reasons why Catholicism is no longer a useful tool in Italy for maintaining the social and economic status quo...

...And the Catholicism of significant sectors of the Italian working- and middle-classes did not keep them from voting for social and economic change, which meant voting for the Left, especially the PCI...

...I was a worker and also a priest...

...The Church mounted a campaign against legalizing abortion, and once every other possibility of aid had been exhausted, I helped a woman who had decided to have an abortion...

...Here is one thing we could offer today to everyone as being truly in the spirit of the Gospel and as an announcement of liberty: give up every exasperated obligation of having to be someone or something, recognize your own needs, don't hide behind this or that alibi, live the occasions and confrontations life offers serenely and without fear...

...As one approaches forty, he fears losing his role, not wanting to take another way in life when so many choices are already precluded...

...I think that if some other modality of life can serve better, one must be confident in looking for it and in following it...

...I asked for it myself...

...Communism, of "God or Marx" (as one anti-Communist flyer put it...

...I refer to the abolition of the division of labor...

...In fact, the Red-scare mounted by the Vatican was much less extensive than many people on the Left -who remembered the virulently anti-Communist campaign of 1948 expected, probably because of the opposition the Church hierarchy encountered from the laity after it launched its first anti-Communist harangues and threats of excommunication at the Italian Bishops' Conference in May...

...This article was written from Italy...

...The fact that the Italian Communist party is now the leading party in the city of Rome points to the direction in which the Italian people seem to be moving...

...never became a major issue during the campaign...

...I say this to give myself courage, because I do not always succeed in having this tranquillity in fact, often just the opposite is true...

...to our prosperity, which must not be paid out of the exploitation of slaves in the factories...

...That the Christian Democrats were able to recuperate votes only at the expense of these small parties means that the DC has continued to lose not only its peasant- and working-class base, but what used to be its "Catholic" electorate as well, that is, an electorate which cut across class lines and which identified with what was supposed to be the DCs "religious" inspiration...

...Confirming my commitment to the Gospel...

...In so doing it broke up the small, barely self-sufficient rural production units centered around the family, units which were traditionally conservative and religiously oriented, often to the point of superstition...

...The number of grassroots Catholic groups organized around the belief that the Gospel can be realized only in a truly socialist society has grown rapidly in the past few years...

...And in fact, the PCI did spectacularly well, winning 34 percent of the vote for the Chamber of Deputies, a remarkable increase of 7.2 percent since the last national parliamentary elections in 1972...

...Despite the efforts of the Christian Democrats and the Church hierarchy to appeal to the religious sentiments of Italian voters, the question of Catholicism vs...

...Robert e. proctor, a member of the faculty at Connecticut College, has made several trips to Italy recently for study of the Italian economic and political situation...

...The DC has thus held onto its position as the relative majority party in Italy...

...Pope John XXIII's emphasis on the close connection between the Catholic faith and social justice made it easier for many Catholics to see the unions and the parties on the Left as organizations which were actively struggling for a better, more just society...

...At the same time expanding means of communication the press, public discussions and debates, etc were gradually bringing the urban and rural populations closer together, and putting large numbers of traditional Catholics into contact with the workers' movement, Marxism and the ideals of socialism...

...It seems to me that in this way you become more and more embittered and we dry up and go our own ways...

...The PSDI vote fell from 5.1 percent in 1972 to 3.4 percent, while the PLI's losses were even greater: from 3.9 percent to 1.3 percent...

...Society prefers conformists and Christianity will always be made up of nonconformists, beginning with Jesus, condemned as a criminal, and continuing up to the criminals of today...

...I am convinced that violence to others begins always with violence to oneself...

...I give back to you the priesthood which I received from your predecessor because I do not believe in mediations which have no objective base in reality: to build something one must stand totally with those with whom he lives and struggles...

...How many persons wear a cross around their necks without knowing that it was once an act of defiance, equivalent to offering oneself up to the gallows...

...But from that time on, despite my continued efforts and the efforts of many others, the clergy and traditional Christians have done nothing but widen the gap that separates them from the people...

...THE ITALIAN ELECTIONS ROBERT E. PROCTOR Catholicism is no longer a useful tool for maintaining the status quo Despite all the political uncertainties that have emerged as a result of the June Italian parliamentary elections, one thing is clear: there is no longer a "Catholic" vote or a "Catholic" party in Italy, Not only did many Catholics vote for the Communists in these elections, but it was primarily a lay, historically anti-clerical electorate that gave the USA- and Vatican-supported Christian Democratic party (DC) enough votes to stage an unexpected comeback...

...I was a practicing Catholic and one who sided with the Left...