inside america

The root of
forgiveness
In secular society, forgiveness, like hope, is doomed to fail without a foundation in Christ, the origin of the love which is the only truth that can uphold such an ideal

by lorenzo albacete

Recently, I was watching the movie Gladiator with Russell Crowe on the movie classic channel and I was struck by how the highest ideals were pursued by the most shocking cruelty without anyone noticing the incompatibility between the two. I thought how this was the dominant culture when the first Christians arrived in Rome and the great cities of the Empire. These first Christians did not seek protection from this culture. Instead, by engaging with it at all of its levels, they humanized it, inserting into it their experience of the dignity of the person, the greatness of reason, and the possibility of mercy and forgiveness. This happened not as the result of political strategies, but as a fruit of their efforts to respond to their encounter with Christ–that is, as the fruit of their faith.

I am presently involved as a consultant to a TV documentary on the contemporary meaning of the idea of forgiveness (to be shown by the PBS TV network in the fall). After interviewing hundreds of people about their experience of forgiveness, the producer has selected ten or so cases for filming, together with commentaries from “experts” in religion, psychology, medicine, history, literature, and other pertinent areas. Going over the initial interviews, it is clear to me that our dominant culture has separated forgiveness from its roots in the religious sense. In its secular version, it is not possible to achieve forgiveness without suppressing one or another aspect of human experience (such as justice for the victim), and therefore without doing violence to reality. We thus find cases in which forgiveness brings about psychological healing, and others in which a “just anger” appears to be the path for psychological health. Most difficult to understand (and most fascinating to the secular mind) is the path of unconditional forgiveness pursued by religious people such as the Amish. On the other hand, even a religious view of forgiveness does not seem possible without suppressing (and thus doing violence) to some aspect of reality such as the satisfaction of the need for justice.
Compare this to the words of the playwright  Milosz’s Abbot to Miguel Manara about his sinful life: “The fact is that you are thinking of things that are no more (and that never were), my son.” Initially, this sounds like an argument for accepting (and practicing) a religious unconditional forgiveness, but it is not the religious sense that moves the Abbot to say this; it is faith in Christ. It is the fact of Christ and His reconciling Death and Resurrection that take seriously all aspects of reality, including the demands for a justice that affirms the dignity of the person—both the sinner and the victim of sin. It is the Love revealed and communicated in Christ that accomplishes this miracle and makes true forgiveness possible, in which mercy and justice truly embrace. (The Abbot asks, “Why are you afraid of losing what has managed to find you?” And he continues, “Penance is not sorrow. It is love.”) This allows Manara to say, after a long path of opening his heart to this Love: “I am Manara. And the one I love says: these things have never been. If one has stolen, if one has killed: let these things not have been! Only He is.”
Once again, it is clear that, without faith in Christ, violence is done to reality, to our humanity, even when pursuing the most noble ideas. Without Christ, human life is cruel.
But why don’t we say this publicly? Why are we afraid to say these things publicly?
It makes me think of Fr. Giussani’s answer to T.S. Eliot’s question about whether man has abandoned the Church or whether it is the Church that has abandoned man. Both are true, Giussani said. And when asked when the Church abandoned man, he replied: “When it became afraid to proclaim Christ.”

Today, we are living the consequences of this fear of proclaiming the fact of Christ. At the same time, the painful circumstances through which our society is living now represent a wonderful opportunity to proclaim Christ, this time without the fear of saying that without Christ human life is cruel. In the name of Man, let us proclaim Christ. Only He is.