All intellectual activity and scholarly research is animated by some religious or cultural perspective, whether that perspective is consciously held and fully articulated (as is indicated by the use of the terms "models" or "paradigms") or, relatively speaking, more taken-for-granted and less than fully developed (as is implied in the concept of "images"). More specifically, the question that the volume addresses is "what are the various models and images of Catholicism that both animate scholarly discussion as well as drives popular discourse of things Italian?"
Whether accepted enthusiastically, rejected totally, or more likely, embraced selectively in some other manner, Catholicism has been central in the lives of both Italians and Italian Americans. Different religious and ethnic groups, philosophies, and academic disciplines on both sides of the Atlantic have had distinctive interpretations of the significance, for better or worse or mixed, of Catholicism for both the Italian nation and the Italian American community.
Some of the essays in the volume are purely academic while others combine the academic with the devotional. Some assume the truthfulness of the cognitive claims of the Catholic faith, others deny it through either reducation or transformation into the secular, and yet others bracket the issue altogether. Some are hostile to the religious institution, others sympathetic, and yet others descriptively neutral. All in all, the attempt has been made to be as inclusive as possible regarding the various appropriations of Catholicism utilized by scholar and lay person alike in Italian Americana.
This volume fills a major void, especially in the field of Italian American studies. Starting with an insightful Foreword by Thomas DiNapoli, New York State assemblyman and member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Italian Studies at Stony Brook University, the book includes essays dealing with the Irish-American, American Protestant, and Jewish and Jewish American critique of Italian American Catholic religiosity. There is also an analysis explaining the attitudes of the nationalist/fascist, liberal/capitalist, socialist/Marxist, and romantic idealist traditions toward the role of the Catholic Church in the affairs of Italy. Literary, feminist, psychoanalytical, social constructionist, and post-modern models and images of Catholicism in Italian Americana add to the intellectual pluralism and breath of this volume. The specific appropriation of the Catholic religion by the southern Italian peasant and typical first generation Italian immigrant is the subject of yet another essay, while there is another piece devoted to the attempt to analyze the relationship between the Catholic and Italian worldviews. There is also an essay which tries to lay out the Catholic Church’s self-understanding of herself as devoted to assisting the Italian Catholic and Italian Catholic American, both body and soul.
There are many possible audiences for the volume. Two would be the generally educated lay publics interested in the fields, respectively, of Italian American and Catholic American studies. Another would be scholars interested in the direction of Italian American studies. Another would be intellectuals interested in the field of the sociology of and distribution of knowledge in society. And yet another would be those interested in reintroducing a Catholic Italian perspective in both American society and the American academy.
The anthology contains contributions by many recognized scholars in the field of Italian and Italian American studies: Linda Ardito of Dowling College, Mary Jo Bona and Fred Gardaphe of Stony Brook University, Michael Carroll of the University of Western Ontario,
Donald J. D’Elia of S.U.N.Y.-Stony Brook, Louis Gesualdi and John C. Rao of St. John’s University, Sister Margherita Marchione of Fairleigh Dickinson University, Frank A. Salamone of Iona College, Anthony L. Hayno
