Today Rome has yet another transportation strike, so Fr. gave us a 3-day weekend. Katherine and I went on a morning march to nail down the Sistine street plan. Sixtus 4th…I think… Sixtus 5th was the one that put criminals’ heads on spikes along Ponte San Angelo, but he may have been involved in street planning too. As Fr noted, the Church’s view of Capital Punishment has certainly evolved. Anyways, Sixtus chopped straight streets through the city between the major basilicas and plopped obelisks at the end to help pilgrims make their way through the city. We started from the Piazza de Popolo, the Pilgrim entry point, and walked via the Spanish steps to get to St. Mary Major’s, and from there we took the next straight street to St. John Lateran and then to Holy Cross in Jerusalem. The next straight street took us through Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele on the way to the forum, so we stopped to see if the metro was running, and lo and behold we found a zippy little train that saved us 4 miles of walking. The best part, besides knowing that we independently understand Rome, would have to be that my legs aren’t even all that tired; Fr. has whipped us into shape.
Wednesday night we visited the North American College, the seminary for Canadians and Americans in Rome. I guess there’s also like 4 Australians, but you get the idea. A seminarian there did this same trip with Maher a few years back, so he arranged a little tour for us and got a group of a couple Gonzaga grads and Washington natives to take us around and have dinner with us in our apartments. Stepping into the NAC felt like taking a tour in the states – the fascist architecture is open, clean, and enclosed a lot of open space, which is pretty rare in Rome, and everyone spoke twangy American English. We even heard a ‘howdy’ in the halls. We got to walk up on the roof, which offers a spectacular view of St. Peter’s and the rest of Rome from the root of the Geniculum hill. We took the seminarians home and cooked up a nice veal roast, potatoes, and pasta with tomato sauce. We had a great time listening to talk between philosophy majors, complete with impressions of crazy professors, as well as horror tales from the Italian post office and an overview of Marian apparitions in Yugoslavia. All the seminarians were very personable and educated – great company. Fr. had told us that in his mother’s day women were not to even look a seminarian in the eye, and some old priests wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone at all. Times have certainly changed. Fr. took us out for gelato afterwards at Old Bridge, and our group chatted quite amiably. One seminarian ferreted me out as a surrounded Protestant and made a point to tell me that he knew and appreciated some Protestants who took their faith seriously and that he valued their perspectives. I could have hugged him, even if some of the other Catholics would sooner have hit him with a ruler.
I continue to play with the idea of becoming Catholic, but I run into a frightening snarl when I find that in order to take Catholicism strictly I must believe in my own exclusion and the devaluation of the churches that have brought me thus far. I know that people who are narrow-minded and bluntly prejudiced are in each camp, and their presence does not color the entire church, but it makes it hard to see how each church actually views the other. I cannot completely validate both currents; I have to make a choice between the two at some point. Saying they are both right doesn’t work so well with Catholic dogma (unless you want to be a Cafeteria Catholic, in which case you shouldn’t call yourself Catholic at all), but accepting Catholic authority seems to denigrate where I come from and the structures that have led me to God. To make things more complicated, how much sweat is all this worth? The important parts overlap. Theology is important, but is it also a black hole that will confuse me and suck up my time without any results? The time to choose or not choose may not be now, but the question doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.
Thursday we looked into some more Baroque churches and reviewed some facades and bridges that we’d already discussed. I’m afraid I don’t have too much to report, I wasn’t feeling my best and took a 3-hour nap in the afternoon. Dinner, however, was fun. We fried eggplant, listened to opera (Maher keeps mentioning Tosca, I feel like I need to catch up on that), and sipped wine while we cooked, and ended the meal with stories about Sicily from Michael and a nice juicy cantaloupe. Can’t complain.
PS: listening to Spotify in Italy terrified me. All of a sudden my music left and a screaming Italian woman came on in an ad for some horror movie. The only thing worse than a screaming lady in a horror movie is a lady screaming in a horror movie in a language you don’t understand.
PPS: It is slow to send mail to the US from Italy, but it’s even worse from the US to Italy. The post office here has actually dumped truckloads of letters into the Tiber before, just because no one cares about their jobs. I hear the government takes 60% of paychecks…but I don’t see much health care or benefits here. Beggars and the poor are everywhere. Fr. says not to give them anything, just give money to the Missionaries of Charity who will spend the money wisely and feed the people who really need it and aren’t faking. It’s still hard to walk by. I guess this is just one manifestation of a government and economy down the drain. Corruption is everywhere, the Mafia is not from the movies, and lots of garbage men have doctorates.
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