Joel Jacobsen

Equal Danger, by the great Sicilian novelist Leonardo Sciascia, is set in an unnamed country not, perhaps, entirely unlike Italy.  The hero, Rogas, goes to see President Riches of the Supreme Court.  As tactfully as he can, he suggests judicial error may have resulted in the conviction of an innocent man:

"You are a practicing Catholic?"

"No."

"But Catholic?"

Rogas made a gesture that signified: like everyone else.  And in fact he did believe that all men everywhere were a little bit Catholic.

"Of course, like everyone else," the President interpreted him correctly.  Assuming the posture of a priest at catechism: "Let us take, well, the Mass, the mystery of transubstantiation, the bread and the wine that become the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ.  The priest may even be unworthy in his personal life, in his thoughts.  But the fact that he has been ordained means that at each celebration of the Mass the mystery is completed.  Never, I say never, can it happen that the transubstantiation not take place.  And so it is with a judge when he celebrates the law: justice cannot not be revealed, not transubstantiated, not completed.  A judge may torment himself, wear himself out, tell himself, 'You are unworthy; you are full of meanness, burdened by passions, confused in your ideas, liable to every weakness and every error'--but in the moment he celebrates the law, he is so no longer.  And much less so afterward.  Can you imagine a priest who, after celebrating Mass, says to himself, 'Who knows if the transubstantiation took place this time, too?'  There's no doubt; it did take place.  Most assuredly.  I would even say inevitably. Think of that priest who was seized by doubt and who, at the moment of the consecreation, discovered blood on his vestments.  I can say this: no judgment has ever bloodied my hands, has ever stained my robes..."

Without meaning to, Rogas made a sound much like a groan.  The President looked at him with disgust.  And as in a fireworks display, when everything seems to be over, in the stunned silence and darkness one more luminous, elaborate, and thunderous rocket explodes, [President] Riches said, "Naturally, I am not a Catholic.  Naturally, I am not even a Christian."

"Naturally," Rogas echoed.  And indeed he was not surprised.

The President was diappointed and irritated, like someone who has just performed a magic turn only to have a child jump up and say he has understood the trick.  With a note of hysteria, he proclaimed, "Judicial error does not exist."

(As translated by Adrienne Foulke.  The Italian title is Il contesto.  Max von Sydow played President Riches in the 1976 film adaptation Excellent Cadavers - a title that has since been reused.)

If you haven't read Sciascia, start with The Day of the Owl.