The End of Justice

This story contains references to sexual violence, physical violence, murder, and blood.

Fiona, my wife, lay dead on the living room floor, and I felt nothing. I glanced at my hand, and the knife, red with her blood, yet not a twinge of conscience. Shouldn’t I feel guilt? I reasoned I had committed a grave sin, and knew it to be a sin, and yet, I knew no guilt. I felt greater sorrow for sin when I had stolen a pack of gum from Floyd’s Pharmacy when I was nine years old. I had run to confession to the priest, feeling this separation from God that was guilt, seeking absolution. And yet, for this grave sin of murder? Murder of my wife of ten years? Nothing.

I glanced at her, her dead eyes staring at the ceiling. I always loved her eyes. But I could conjure only a vague recollection of love. There was no memory of a sense of it. Only a concept. Something was broken in me. I reasoned I should go to a priest and confess. I went to the bathroom and washed the blood from the knife and from my hands. Glancing to the mirror, I would have to change my clothes. Maybe it would be best to take a shower?

I listened to the radio while I showered. A scientist on the news warned of a problem with the earth moving further from the sun and the moon moving further from the earth. Some unexplainable diminishment in the gravitational force holding the celestial bodies in their place. I thought of the terrestrial body on the floor in the living room. Surely, she would remain in her place.

After I cleaned myself up and dressed, I stepped over her body, a bloody mess, to get to the door. Why had I killed her? I must have wanted to, and there was nothing any longer holding me back from doing whatever I wanted to do. Didn’t I used to have something holding me back? A sense of justice? But there was nothing, now. She was just a body I remembered doing things with, but hadn’t she been a person? I reasoned that she had been. And I had murdered her. And murder was a sin. And sins, sins you confessed to a priest.

I opened the door and began my walk to the church. Bernie, my neighbor, was raping a young girl on his front lawn. We used to go to church together. Would he be heading to confession when he was through with her? I doubted it. I always thought Bernie walked with us to church because he had a crush on Fiona. I often joked about it with her. But I never actually believed he would do anything violent. He was always pretty uptight and repressed. But he certainly was letting loose now.

I heard a gunshot from across the street, and saw a man, yes, that was Tom Flannegan, fall dead from a bullet shot from a gun held in the hand of his ten-year-old daughter Penny. Tom had been concerned that she was so sullen and introverted. I guess Penny had finally come out of her shell.

I felt no compulsion to help the raped woman or the shot man. I thought of the people doing these things, Bernie, and Penny. Did they feel guilty? I must not be the only one struggling with lack of conscience, this complete freedom from inhibitions. Would the line for confessions at the church be long? Or was I some kind of weirdo, having reasoned my way into going without the slightest sense of guilt. My intellect sent me where I went, not some grief in my soul for having separated myself from God. Hadn’t that grief always been what drove me to confession in the past? But it was just not there.

What would I tell the priest? Would he ask if I were sorry for my sins? I reasoned that I should be. But there was no feeling of sorrow. Must I feel sorrow for my sins to be absolved? Why did I seek absolution? I had some memory that I was supposed to, little more. After all, it would be a sensible thing to do, if it were possible. If there were an afterlife, certainly there would be a great benefit to absolution. But didn’t absolution require contrition? And a firm purpose of amendment? I think I could manage a firm purpose of amendment. I had no desire to kill anyone else. I had murdered and got no satisfaction or delight from the act. It was just something I did. Why would I find it difficult to resolve not to do it again? But was I contrite? Was I sorry? If I had it to do again, would I? Probably not. But not because it was wrong. Just because, well, what was the point? I had no rational reason for killing her. Was that close enough to contrition? Just to say I wouldn’t bother doing it if I had to do it again?

As I approached the church, a squad car raced by with its siren wailing and lights flashing. It screeched to a stop a hundred yards or so past me. Was I concerned about being caught? Facing justice for my crimes? Oddly, no. The policeman got out of his car and gruffly grabbed a middle-aged woman and beat her with a truncheon. I stopped walking and watched. She fell to the ground and appeared unconscious. But the cop kept beating her, likely to death. Was she his wife? Maybe we had something in common. He gave one last heavy blow to her head and glanced at me. I shrugged. He got back into his squad car and drove off.

I reached the large, gothic church, St. Andrews. Saint Andrew had been crucified on and X shaped cross. X marks the spot. What an odd thought. I ascended the stairs. A gargoyle had fallen off the facade and lay smashed on the stone steps. Gargoyles were supposed to guard the church from demons. Had the demons vanquished the gargoyle and occupied the church? I chuckled.

I entered through the center portal. The confessionals were at the front of the church on the right side. I blessed myself with holy water and genuflected to—nothing. There was no sense of holiness. Only utter abandonment. The altar was there. The tabernacle was there. But there was no sense of the presence there. The church was lit by candles, dim incandescent lighting, and the colored sunlight shining through the stained glass. I walked toward the front. I recalled that there were some sins that cried out for vengeance, and a gay couple engaged in one of them on the steps leading up to the altar. There was a time when I might have been outraged at such a sacrilege. I might have even physically chased them from the church. Or called for help. I chuckled.

The idea of calling for help, calling for the police, struck me as comical. I had witnessed a policeman beating an unarmed woman with a truncheon, among other mayhem, on my walk to the church. The police were not immune from whatever caused this absence of conscience.

I knelt in a pew and waited for the penitent ahead of me to complete his confession. I recalled the act of contrition: Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee. Was I heartily sorry? I knew I should be. And I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell. Surely, I felt the loss of heaven. Was this hell? This place where I could murder and feel no guilt? It couldn’t be. I imagined the pains of hell would be severe, and I felt nothing. But most of all because I have offended thee, my God, who is all good and deserving of all my love. I had offended God. But what did it mean to be “all good?” And love? I understood it only as a concept. Putting another’s needs before one’s own. Sacrifice. I looked to the cross that still hung over the altar. Yes, that was love. But why was my understanding so remote, so conceptual. Like a distant memory. I firmly resolve, with the help of thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Grace? Surely that was what was missing. Like the scientist’s report of gravity diminishing, somehow, grace had diminished, and now was nearly wholly absent. Grace was another conceptual thing, not a thing of reality. At least not anymore.

The penitent in the confessional left with a strange, vacant smile on his face. I entered the confessional and knelt. The priest slid the door behind the screen over.

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been about a month or so since my last confession.”

“Go ahead.”

“I murdered my wife.”

“That’s a very serious sin, my son. Why did you do it?”

“That’s just it, Father. I don’t know. I just figured I could.”

The priest sighed audibly. “And do you feel sorry for your sins?”

“I don’t feel anything, Father. I know I should feel sorry. I want to feel sorry. But I seem to have lost sense of, well—morality. I have no reaction to evil, or even, a way to judge evil or good. Everything is just action and reaction. I came here, because I know it should be the right thing to do, but its just conceptually the right thing, not like it should be, with a feeling of guilt. Like I used to feel guilty for sin.”

“My son, unfortunately, your experience has become common in these days. It is a sign of the times. Psychologists believe that something has caused an epidemic of psychopathy, but such a thing—there just is no mechanism for it. Science has no explanation for what is happening and relying on science leaves great gaps in understanding. Justice is, uh, dissipating. It’s not that you cannot sense justice. Justice, itself, is not there for you to sense. All you will have now is a conceptual idea of right and wrong, so you must use rational judgements to discern what to do. There will be no grace to guide you. You will not be able to sense right and wrong anymore, the way you could in the past.”

“Are we in hell, Father? Is that what this separation from grace means?”

“No, my son. It is the final test. Many men of science look at justice as a thing of the mind, but it isn’t. It is a dimension of reality built into the fabric of the universe. We sense this dimension through our consciences and the measure in this dimension is guilt or moral satisfaction—the abhorrence of what is evil, the appreciation of what is good and beautiful. But justice, morality, is fully a dimension, just as length or height or width or time. The moral dimension of the universe is becoming what men who did not believe in God thought it to be—just a concept of the mind. This is how it will be until the end. God is unmaking the universe, and part of the fabric of the universe is the dimension of morality. We have only our intellect to guide us, now.”

“Can I be absolved if I don’t feel sorry? I know I want to be absolved. I know what I did was a sin. I just don’t feel guilty.”

“Yes, my son. You are as contrite as circumstances allow. Through the ministry of the Church, may God give you pardon and peace. I absolve you of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. For your penance, say a rosary for your wife’s soul. If you can, before the end comes, give her a Christian burial. That might be difficult, so it is not part of your penance, just something you should do. I would tell you to turn yourself in to the authorities to face justice for your crime, but there is no justice for the authorities to deliver. We are past the time where that is possible.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“Go in peace.”

I exited the confessional. Who knew that justice was a dimension and guilt a measure, much like distance is measured in miles or time measured in hours? As I knelt in a pew to pray my rosary, my penance, a mob of people rushed into the church with axes and started chopping. They chopped statues. They chopped stain glass. And they chopped up the penitent who had confessed before me and who had loitered at the back of the church. One of them ran up the aisle, toward me. The rosary would have to wait. I fled toward the front of the church and exited the nave, slammed the door behind me and wedged it shut. A loud chop at the door, and the blade of an axe popped through.

I scrambled down the stairs. An ancient, heavy wooden door, I pulled it open, shut it behind me, and threw the large wooden bolt to hold it fast. If they tried to chop through, it would take a while. I descended a spiral staircase into the crypt below the church, where countless of our faithful ancestors were laid to rest. I completed my penance and said an extra prayer for the priest, who the axe-wielding mob had likely chopped to pieces.

And I recalled the bible verse that, in the end, the dead in Christ would rise first. And I would have a front-row seat to witness it. What better place was there to be, here at the end of all time, when the world would be remade anew?