What is the similarity between church and mafia? By analogy with the famous comedy, it can be said that the mafia, like the Church, is immortal. In the film “John Wick” by Chad Stachelski, the Russian mafia and the Russian Orthodox Church are presented as complementary structures where the head of the church is at the same time the head of the mafia. Of course, if the movie were filmed in the traditional Hollywood script, the final shooting would take place in a church temple with the Mafia. Today one can imagine a movie where the scene of the shooting takes place in the Armenian Apostolic Church with the participation of the Armenian mafia.
Many Armenians, especially liberal intellectuals, are convinced that the mafia and the Church are united. It is well-known that church-building is done by mafia and mafia-like oligarchs. There is an opinion that the Armenian Apostolic Church has to cooperate with the mafia for its survival. But it only seems and is merely a theoretical argument. I think the example of today’s Catholic Church can be a convincing counterargument.
The most important counterargument is that the origins of patronage, corruption, and the mafia in general are in the public mind. In his classic study “Moral underpinnings of backward society,” Edward Benfield has shown that corruption, including the political one, and mafia, is a consequence of what he calls “immoral feminism.” In such societies one has no other identity than the family. One is someone’s husband, father, brother, uncle, etc. All those who are out of family relationships are dregs. The main social feeling is suspicion and envy. On the other hand, every family leader knows that other families are jealous of their success and want to cause harm. He should be careful and try to harm the rival families in turn. It’s a familiar picture, isn’t it? Every day this scenario is repeated in Armenian television series.
The centuries-old pillar of the Sicilian Mafia and Comorian Calabria in southern Italy was the Catholic Church. In the 1980s, however, the Church decided to fight the Mafia, viewing it as a perverse belief. The struggle was governed by the covenant of Jesus, the Jesuits, in the name of one of the most prestigious intellectuals in the congregation, Padre Sorghe Bartholomew. Why the Jesuits? For centuries the Jesuits have been involved in education and church preaching. The task was to change the culture of thinking, the mentality. And only they could organize it in a systematic way.
The basis of the mafia is the public mentality. It is based on the principle of distortion of national, family, friendship values, values of religious devotion and respect for authority. For example, friendship turns into a “brotherhood,” civil values into the righteousness of criminal world, and so on. The mafia does not go against the public order, it dictates its corrupt order, its rules of the game, and the Mafiosi should not be confused with criminal authorities. The members of the mafia feel the need for public respect for themselves first, and only then do they create an atmosphere of fear.
What is the core of our thinking? The first is the school. Not the teachers, though this is an important circumstance, but the textbooks, the ideology embedded in them. In Armenia, textbooks preach values of national, family, friendship, religious devotion, respect for authority, but often their distorted, “mafia style” version. Also important is the fact that textbook compilation is in the hands of the “textbook mafia,” as one of my friends at a textbook contest assured me. Textbooks are very profitable businesses, hence their poor quality, ideological perversion.
Another important source of shaping the culture of thinking is the mass media, especially television. And what it is like, we have already hinted. The third pillar is religion. What the Catholic Church did to liberate the peoples of Latin America from tyranny is well known. Padre Sorghe is convinced that the Bible is not an opiate for the people, but an explosive weapon that inspires courage to fight. And the vast majority of clergymen of the Armenian Apostolic Church are convinced that the church should preach obedience to the authorities. That is the mafia’s distortion of the Bible.
Why are traditional churches intolerant of other religious organizations? The Church does not want to have competitors, and the government fears the birth of another mindset and its alien value system, which could undermine the mentality on which its power is based.
The idea of the Jesuits was that in Palermo, the capital of Sicily, the youth needed to establish a political school that would prepare future politicians who could fight the Mafia. From here stems the applied and practical direction of the school. No religious subjects were taught except the social teaching of the Catholic Church. In just 12 years, only 500 diplomas were awarded, but those graduates were able to change their culture of thinking, and one of them became mayor of Palermo.
We are talking about a very simple idea of creating a civil society. Many NGOs are engaged in this in Armenia, but the result is not noticeable, as in the case of the Jesuits.
But only a small group of Jesuits did not fight the mafia, but the whole Italian Church. The pope’s pastoral visits to Sicily and the Cardinal’s sharp speeches against the mafia were significant. And about a thousand Mafiosi waited for days in front of the Palermo Temple for their punishment to be lifted. Why? Because without a unique interpretation of traditional values, the Mafia was losing its footing and turning into an ordinary gang, and the church is the most fundamental of those values. It is not strange that the mafia boss is called a godfather. These are blessed relationships in the name of God and they punish the “traitors” in the name of God. It is no coincidence that the Armenian elite blessed long-standing relationships with church participation for many years, and these ties were strengthened by godfather-godchild relations, and the former leadership often participated in these events.
In Italy, the church defeated the traditional mafia. But the other mafia, the mafia of modern and educated bureaucrats, as Padre Sorghe notes, is inaccessible to the church. Pope Francis has excommunicated the mafia and fights it even more vigorously. If the school and the university do not train citizens, civil society activists, then television openly promotes the values of “immoral feminism”. And it does so not only through soap operas, but also through show business. And the mafia does not remain in debt. It is not just about financial, but also about state awards as well – titles, medals, advertising, etc.
Here one can remember Franklin Roosevelt’s experience with the oligarchs and mafia. After the Great Depression, in the 1930s, the Italian mafia not only defeated and subjugated the mafias of other nationalities, but also the Hollywood.
Film companies began massively releasing films that glorified the mafia, criminals, oligarchs, whereas the law enforcement officials, judges, prosecutors were presented were defamed. This time, too, the Jesus covenants, the Jesuits, the Catholic and Protestant churches resisted. They conducted a study and presented it in 1933 to the President-elect Franklin Roosevelt. Churches have declared that such films are against true faith and patriotism and that such films should be boycotted. Tens of millions of Americans joined the movement. The president personally met with Hollywood leaders and threatened financial, political and other sanctions if they do not change their policies. Hollywood had to cope with social and political pressure.
Religious intolerance in Armenia is first and foremost a matter of mentality, and it only seems at first glance that it is due to a clash of different perceptions of faith.
In fact, the fight is for immoral feminism: perverted perceptions of the family, religious intolerance, subordination of women to men.
