A white dove in flight.
A white dove in flight. Credit: awmleer / Unsplash Credit: awmleer / Unsplash

‘To err is human, to forgive divine’— a timeless phrase from an essay by 18th century poet Alexander Pope on the essential role of constructive criticism in helping writers learn from their mistakes. But the expression has become a popular aphorism attesting to the challenge intrinsic to forgiveness in our daily lives—making mistakes is easy, but forgiving them requires an exercise of our higher nature.

So how do we ask for forgiveness for our own transgressions, and how do we forgive those who trespass against us? Can we forgive ourselves as well as others? Can victims ever make the transition to realising Jesus’ exhortation to forgive your offender 70 times 7? —

“Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not just seven times, but seventy times seven “[Romans 12; Matthew 18]

These questions got a public workout in Boston in 2018, as an extraordinary conjunction of events produced dramatic public controversies over offenders and victims, and how they should be treated. Two simultaneous cases provided stark contrasts in reactions and outcomes for both victims and offenders: in one, we witnessed an unsuccessful appeal for forgiveness by a prominent offender, while in the other, we encountered exceptional compassion by a rape victim confronting her attacker in court.

The prominent offender was Tom Ashbrook, a NPR radio show celebrity who was fired by Boston’s local affiliate station WBUR for creating an abusive work environment. Ashbrook took to the pages of the Boston Globe to defend himself, making a public apology and asking for forgiveness for his “offensive and overbearing behavior.” His request was not well received, neither by readers nor a Globe columnist, who all felt Ashbrook didn’t quite get it and gave his request for forgiveness a failing grade. The harshness of many reader reactions led one commenter to liken their online treatment of Ashbrook to a “public lynching.”

Meanwhile across town in Suffolk Superior Court, a young female victim, Jane Doe (her identity protected by anonymity), was demanding a public apology from her rapist, MIT student Samson Donick, while agreeing to a plea bargain that would let him avoid prison time, since the prospect of a public trial was too overwhelming. Jane Doe got her wish at a subsequent public hearing, where Donick was required to own up to his 2015 attack on the victim in her dorm room at Boston University, pleading guilty and expressing his “extreme sorrow.”

These two cases from both ends of the forgiveness spectrum illustrate the pain and anguish experienced by both victims and repentant offenders in their attempts to deal with personal tragedies. Can we find helpful models of forgiveness— of self and others— that they can turn to for guidance and precedent? 

The most structured model is provided by the Catholic Church in its ancient rite of Confession, where penitents have a private meeting with an ordained priest who guides them through the ritual of confession, contrition, resolution, penance and absolution. With the words “ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis”, the priest pronounces formal forgiveness for their sins.

Bishop Desmond Tutu has proposed a more modern formula for forgiveness aimed at healing the wounds of injustice for victims. When he chaired South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1994, Tutu said that decades of institutional injustice against victims of apartheid needed to be remedied in four ways: Apology, Compensation, Punishment, and Reconciliation.

A recent eulogy paid tribute to Tutu’s prescriptions for justice for victims, recognising his steadfastness in bearing witness to the power of restorative justice and “…the politics of forgiveness and the irresistible moral appeal of genuine reconciliation.”

There are, unfortunately, many examples of abusive institutions whose response to victims is limited to copious apologies and financial compensation, while punishment is rare, and reconciliation, which lies at the heart of forgiveness, rarer still. Tutu insisted that forgiveness isn’t a freebee that victims hand out: the offender has to earn it to deserve it. Only then might true reconciliation occur. 

This might help explain why so many Bostonians remained unreconciled to their local offender, Tom Ashbrook: they didn’t yet feel he had earned his forgiveness.

One other inspirational example of unalloyed forgiveness comes from the life of an 11-year-old Italian girl, Maria Goretti, who in 1902 was sexually assaulted and, when she resisted, stabbed to death by her neighbor, 20-year-old Alessandro Serenelli. As she was dying, Maria forgave Alessandro; 30 years later upon his release from jail, Alessandro went to ask forgiveness from Maria’s mother who, following her daughter’s precedent, also forgave him.

When the Vatican canonized Maria as a saint in 1950, the sex-obsessed Catholic Church proclaimed her the Patron Saint of Purity because of her chastity. This seems a misreading of the significance of her life. I prefer to believe that Goretti’s most important defining characteristic was not her virginity, but her generosity of spirit, which brought her on her death bed to forgive her murderer. For me, St Maria Goretti is the Patron Saint, not of chastity, but of Forgiveness.

I see that same generous spirit of forgiveness in the other remarkable young woman, Jane Doe, who told the Boston court in 2018 that she did not want her rapist to be registered as a sex offender (and thus marked for life), because “everyone deserves second chances.” 

Her unique gift of compassion extended an olive branch to her attacker, her victim statement a virtual prayer for his conversion and redemption in the spirit of Tutu’s reconciliation:

“I ask that you make your future untainted…..

 I ask that you make a positive impact in every life you touch because the many negative impacts you made in mine and my family’s are enough for a lifetime. 

I ask that you take seconds, minutes and hours and truly realize how that one early morning you changed a 20 year old girl from a student to a victim to a survivor ……….

I ask that you live each day with a little reminder of what you did and make up for it.”

Forgiving does not mean forgetting, but its gift can be as therapeutic for the donor as for the recipient. My prayer is that Jane Doe will sometime in the future be able to give herself the healing gift of forgiveness, to enable her to move on from victim to survivor to her free, whole self.

Dr. Arthur McCaffrey

After a long academic career as a psychologist and research scientist at Harvard University, Dr. Arthur McCaffrey recently retired and now devotes his time to championing the cause of justice for victims...