Corrupt Capitalist Catholicism
The novel becomes a story of the loss of faith in the Catholic Church as an institution of trust and charity. This faith is such an essential element of Italian culture that it is almost inextricable. To think of Italian-Americans is to think of Catholic iconography. The protagonist undergoes a severe test of faith which pits his mother’s deep-seated trust in the Church based upon a European tradition more deeply stepped in socialist ideology versus what he sees as the Americanization of the church. This capitalist corruption is embodied in the character of the profoundly contaminated Father John. Ultimately, the test of faith fails on the part of faith through the inconvenient intrusion of facts and evidence.
False Profits of Protestant Ethics
Interestingly, the conflict between the Catholicism of the Italian immigrant community and the predominance of Protestantism in the American populate is not one based on theology. American capitalism is the poison which flows through the story and corporate immorality is the active ingredient. But what services the poison throughout the population is the widespread dissemination and unquestioning acceptance of the fundamental myth of the Protestant work ethic as the essential necessity for achieving the American Dream.
The promise that all it takes to make it in America is hard work, dedication to free enterprise, and loyalty to the company is revealed to be pure unsubstantiated propaganda in which the worst consequences of all is the ease with which the myth sucks gullible workers into acting against their own self-interest. Salvation cannot be found in landing a good job any more than it can be found in the Church in America.
The Italian Immigrant Experience
The novel was, until the appearance of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather thirty years later, considered the defining American novel about the Italian immigrant experience. Since Puzo’s novel deals exclusively with criminal pursuit of the American Dream, Christ in Concrete still retains its status as the single most iconic novel specifically about honest, low-wage Italian-American laborers. What is perhaps most astonishing about the story it tells is that all the events which serve to make it a tragic tale could very easily be used by its main character to justify the story turning into a prequel of sorts to The Godfather.
When reading about his loss of faith in the Catholic Church, God, and the Protestant work ethic as the guaranteed key to achieving the American Dream, it is not difficult to draw parallels between Paul and the young Vito Corleone before he enters the criminal underworld. Paul, however, not only fails to be tempted by the suspected lure of crime which one imagines must surround him, he fails even to pursue legal means of improving his odds of success in the face of the sacrifices they would place upon his family.
