you say in Mafia Republic is that in the 70’s there was a tendency to portray the generation shift in the mafia leadership in a simplistic way as traditionalist vs modern, and you said this was a “bad fit with reality”. There was an article last year in the Telegraph about the new generation of mafia leaders who go out on luxury yachts, eat expensive meals, are active on social media etc... and it seemed to be saying the same thing about generation shift. is it any more accurate these days?
Finally, you’re coming to talk about the link between the Church and the Mafia, so what kind of things can we expect to be hearing about and what are the main findings (obviously without giving too much away)?
Very briefly, we can ask “what does the Church get out of the relationship with the mafia?” and “what does the mafia get out of the relationship with the Church?”
What the mafia gets out is a number of things. An ideology, a language that they can use to justify what they’re doing, both to themselves and to others. They get a way of legitimising themselves, if they can show themselves walking arm in arm with a priest on the local saint’s day procession, which allows them to disguise themselves as a sort of traditional form of authority.
The Church for its part was looking for sources of authority in society that weren’t the state, and the mafia is very good at dressing itself up as a traditional form of authority, “the man who resolves people’s problems, mediates between peasants and landowners etc…” So the Church felt this kind of affinity for the mafia as it presented itself.
Today, while there are still priests who collude, it’s more a question of priests who want an easy life. They spin the stuff about sin and forgiveness, and they prefer not to see that Mafiosi are duping them, essentially, and getting legitimacy, and a bit of balm for their consciences, in return for mouthing the script about forgiveness and so on and so forth.
John Dickie will be speaking at Bristol University on thursday 18th of march at 17:15 in LT3, chemistry building. The event is open to everyone and we look forward to seeing you there.
One of the most frequent hooks in a mafia story is “the mafia has modernised. It’s changed. You think you know what it is, but actually it’s something different. It’s now infiltrating politics, shock horror!” which of course is what it was doing 150 years ago. “It’s no longer some peasant with a flat cap and a sawn off-shotgun,” well it never was just that. It’s an easy journalistic narrative that at best has a tiny fragment of truth about it.
What is most shocking about the mafias is that they’re the same as they always were.
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CULTURA E SOCIETA