A Bohemian Poet Watching an Italian Poet at Work While Keeping an Eye on His Sign Language: Reflection on Classic Italian Movie 8 1/2 and Its Question: What the Hack Is the Relation Between Caholicism and Communism?

As I watch classic Italian movie 8 1/2, I gradually come to understand that the mind that created this cinematic poem also try to convey the idea that the deeper root of communism lies in Italy and Italy's old, ancient imperial wisdom. The fact that the most important communist parties in Europe happened to exist in the most Catholic European countries is no accident. As the main protagonist of the movie says: "We were all educated as Catholics in our childhood."

In this light communism is emerging through a motley of said and unsaid hints as Catholicism's latest radical heresy which was as "the chosen son" also duly sacrificed ... for the greater glory of the Mother Church and the new religion and heresy the name and gospel of which is yet unknown to the public.

However, whatever is to be the next, the centrality and absolute vitality of the Catholic AND Italian AND Roman concept and DIALECTICS of the Mortal Sin would have to be kept and remain central. For it is the idea of mortal or deadly (killing) sin and sinfulness that supplies the Mother (and also the Father) with her eroticism, vibrancy, power drive and life. It is the continuous and continuously revived (and continuously shrewdly, if not cruelly) mortified desire and its simultaneously indoctrinated and preached abhorrence that not only explains the difficult and thorny (if the other word would be brutal) relationship of Italian men to Italian women and of Italian women to Italian men, but also the Church's own ontologically and thus deeply rooted Machiavellianism, psychological sophism and understanding of the essence of its enduring power.

And, of course, once Communist societies tried their best to kill Eros, they died--having committed the drabbest suicide--to weak to even make a proper statement. For the Church needs sinners and sinning, and especially of the mortal kind. And this requires, necessitates desire and its constant renewal, revival, wetting and watering. And capitalism learned this rather well.

So while sinning against the Church is certainly a sin, it is one that ensures the Church's power and existence. But sinning against Eros, the Holy Ghost itself (or herself), is never pardoned. Neither by God nor by the gods.