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Cover
story Two
new books suggest forgiveness is in the air
By MICHAEL J. FARRELL
They may be mere straws in a still
formidable wind, but they may also be harbingers of a gentler generation to
come. The recent megaconference on voluntarism challenged our typical
dog-eat-dog attitude. An article in Psychology Today admonishes, "Go
Ahead, Say You're Sorry." An article in Modern Maturity is titled "The
New Compassion." They add up neither to utopia nor heaven, but still. And two
books just out confirm psychologist Robert Enright's contention (see main
story) that forgiveness is in the air.
The Process of Forgiveness, by Fr. William A. Meninger
(Continuum, 153 pages, $12.95 paperback), begins with several stories. A former
prisoner explains how, for the first year of his sentence, "I was bitter and
angry and hated them all. Then I realized I could no longer allow them to
control my life, so I learned to love and forgive them."
Catholics may notice something new in this typical story.
Generations of confessors would probably admit that, down here where the rubber
meets the road, such motives as the sufferings and death of Jesus, or even the
fires of hell, were too remote to scare or soften us into forgiveness. Now,
self-interest helps coax us to forgiveness for our own sake if not for
others.
Another former prisoner who had been blaming everyone for his
misfortunes told Meninger: "The poison and the pain, the hatred and the anger,
were hurting me so badly that I had to change from within. I was finally forced
to realize that the only way I could escape from my real prison, the one I had
built around myself, was to learn forgiveness and love. I did! It was not easy,
but I have been free ever since."
Meninger, a Trappist, anchors his book more firmly in the
Christian tradition than psychologist Enright. Nevertheless the same ideas keep
popping into view. Meninger, too, describes what forgiveness is not: not
forgetting; not a form of absolution; not a pretense; and not a sign of
weakness but of strength. Then the book goes on to explain what forgiveness is,
and follows with several chapters on the stages of forgiveness, ending in
"wholeness" where author Ken Keyes is quoted: "The world tends to be your
mirror. A peaceful person lives in a peaceful world. An angry person creates an
angry world. ... An unfriendly person should not be surprised when he/she meets
only people who sooner or later respond in an unfriendly way."
Meninger, a leader of the centering prayer movement, stays at all
times within a hoot and a holler of grace and divine goodness. His book is a
healthy mixture of the practical and the transcendent.
The Art of Forgiveness, by Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz
(WCC Publications, PO Box 348, Route 222 and Sharadin Road, Kutztown PA
19530-0348; 118 pages, $10.90 paperback), is subtitled "Theological Reflections
on Healing and Reconciliation." The implied equivalence between forgiveness and
reconciliation reflects how terminology in this area can ebb and flow depending
on the author.
"How dare I as a German talk about forgiveness?" the author
begins. Born in 1940, he grew up with guilt over the Hitler period, became a
theologian, has served (the blurb says) in a variety of ecumenical positions in
his native Germany and Latin America, and has been active with the World
Council of Churches.
Müller-Fahrenholz's treatment of forgiveness is, not
surprisingly, grounded in the Bible, in the struggle to climb beyond savagery
to justice, then beyond justice to forgiveness and the gracious, loving life
that history tells us Jesus preached and practiced. But he is also prepared to
confront the thorny issues.
He has very harsh words for Christianity's historical abuse of
forgiveness and the "radical misinterpretation" of Christ's words to Peter
about the keys of the kingdom and the promise that what Peter bound would be
bound in heaven, and so on:
Control of the keys of the kingdom turned the disciples
of Jesus, who were meant to be "workers for the joy" of the people into "lords
over their faith" (2 Cor. 1:24). As long as people could be persuaded that they
needed God's presence to sustain their lives and the sacraments of the church
in order not to end up in eternal damnation, the religious institutions could
hold on to supreme power. By threatening to bind the sinner on earth and in
heaven, the sacrament of penance (into which the gospel of forgiveness had been
transformed) became an instrument of religious terror, rendering the priests,
bishops and popes absolute masters over the people's consciousness and lives.
And, as is well-known, this spiritual power generated tremendous material and
political gains.
Müller-Fahrenholz is no professional Catholic-basher but an
ecumenist of some standing. He writes with bluntness and conviction, healthy
prerequisites for forgiveness. His thoughts leap from the Bible to novelist
Toni Morrison to philosopher Hannah Arendt. His emphasis is less on
interpersonal forgiveness and more on wider political ramifications, which must
in turn be reduced to individual lives because only individuals can
forgive.
It's no wonder Jesus used parables. They touch a soft spot in
people and are hard to resist. Similarly, among the highlights of these books
are the anecdotes. Müller-Fahrenholz tells of a group of old Germans who
in their youth fought in Belorussia, in the former Soviet Union, with Hitler's
army. After the Chernobyl disaster, to make amends for the war, they went to
Belorussia to build a home for orphaned children. They stayed several weeks.
They visited the Belorussian war memorial at Chatyn. That night they gathered
with their hosts. A local author remembers:
Then one [German] got up and struggled to say a few words. ...
He talked of his own history, that he had been in the war, that he had been in
a Russian prisoner-of-war camp, and then he stopped, and we all sensed that the
moment had come at which one could not simply go on remembering -- something
redeeming might happen. And it happened.
The man excused himself. He said that he felt deeply sorry for
what he had done as a person, and for what the Germans had done in Russia. And
then he tried to say that this must never happen again, but his voice broke. He
had to sit down because he wept so hard. Around him there were young people.
They were overcome and they too were weeping. Then an old woman got up, went
over to that man -- she was a Belorussian woman -- and took him into her arms
and kissed him.
The old German was lucky. He was able to speak his guilt and win
some sort of redemption. At the end of the day, we don't want to die without
our business in order.
National Catholic Reporter, May 30,
1997
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