Western society’s forgiveness moment

TORONTO — The world was struck when relatives of victims of the Charleston church massacre publicly forgave the killer on the weekend, but the pronouncements were still somehow familiar.

Western society is having a forgiveness moment — those offering it, and those seeking it.

“We apologize,” Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said Monday as she sought to make amends with survivors of residential schools. “Your truth has woken our conscience and our sense of justice.”

Also Monday, Pope Francis asked forgiveness for the church’s persecution of members of a evangelical church in Italy whose leader was excommunicated and followers branded as heretics during the Middle Ages.

“On the part of the Catholic Church, I ask your forgiveness, I ask it for the non-Christian and even inhuman attitudes and behaviour that we have showed you,” he said. “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, forgive us!”

Forgiveness can be the ultimate balm to acts both heinous and unspeakable.

“The weak can never forgive,” Mahatma Gandhi said. “Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong,” and in the aftermath of monstrous behaviour, psychologist Frank Farley said, “The idea of forgiveness always arises.”

Farley, who grew up in Edmonton and now teaches at Temple University in Philadelphia, is a fan of forgiveness therapy — for the forgiver.

But he said little research has been done on the effects of forgiveness on the person being forgiven — the perpetrator, in criminal matters, of the horror.

Farley, incoming president of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict and Violence, felt his unease growing as he listened to relatives of the nine black church members shot dead at point-blank range during a Bible meeting offering alleged white shooter Dylann Roof their forgiveness and prayers.

“We have no room for hating, so we have to forgive,” said the sister of victim DePayne Middleton-Doctor. “I pray God on your soul.”

Farley said it’s possible that publicly forgiving horrific acts “lifts some of the possible guilt, remorse, or fear of hell from some perpetrators.”

Is it possible it becomes a kind of reinforcement for heinous behaviour?

If guilt and remorse can be influenced at an unconscious level by the prospect of public forgiveness, he said, that could unleash “some of the heart of darkness that stalks the human condition.”

“The perpetrator doesn’t have to know — the forgiveness is in your mind and your soul, and that’s where the positive effects are found.”