Mafia self-administered justice is legitimated as parallel to divine rather than human law

Evidence

The priest unwittingly suggests an ideological connection between the clergy and the mafia in his reservations about established human justice, almost as if this were a challenge to divine justice and its inscrutable verdicts. It follows, according to this perverse subcultural theology, that by taking justice into his own hands, man may defy the law of men but not necessarily that of God. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 135

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the state-failure framing: the mafia’s private justice substitutes for state tribunals, and this subcultural theology retroactively sanctifies it — relevant to Bonasera’s opening plea in The Godfather.