If I Offended Anybody
As my first solo issue of In Character goes to press, I owe immense gratitude to Sir John Templeton, who died in July, at the age of ninety-five, and who grew up in an era w…
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Forgiveness, Fall 2008
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Ten Great Moments in Forgiveness History
8th Century BC: The Sabine women implore the Sabine men not to attack their Roman abductors, who are now their lawfully wedded husbands. AD 29: Christ forgives from the cross…
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Pinning Your Own Tail on Someone Else’s Donkey – Guilty feelings got you down? Let Dr. Feelgood help you move on.
Forgiveness is one of the golden words of our culture. It glistens with a hundred admirable qualities, and its purity and moral prestige seem beyond challenge. Even when we…
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False Apology Syndrome – I’m sorry for your sins.
There is a fashion these days for apologies: not apologies for the things that one has actually done oneself (that kind of apology is as difficult to make and as unfashionab…
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Is Revenge Just Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly? – Even guppies do it. But ending hostilities appears to be just as natural.
Even the conventional wisdom admits that revenge tastes sweet — it’s that sickly aftertaste that gets you. Is it wrong to seek revenge? Michael McCullough, an in…
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When Monkeys Make Up – Chimps are from Mars, bonobos are from Venus.
"I never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla,” writes Robert Sapolsky in his delightful…
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Nine Views: Must We Forgive People Who Have Done What Would Seem to Be Unforgivable?
1. Immaculée Ilibagiza: “[W]henever I came to the words in the Lord’s Prayer that call us ‘to forgive those who trespass against us,’ …
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Forgive Us Our Debts? – No, not our sins, our mortgages: Should those who can’t afford their mortgages be helped by the government? Two views.
David M. Abromowitz As schoolchildren know, the Liberty Bell is inscribed with the words “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof…
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Fathers and Sons – “Who is Ruth?” I asked. “I thought you knew,” she said. A lesson in three parts ...
I’m standing alone on a cold pebble beach in the silence of a gathering twilight, and across the vast, mirror surface of the sea, beyond the horizon, the sky blazes in…
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Why Mephistopheles Had to Work Overtime – Evil is glamorous. But great works of literature are more likely to end with scenes of reconciliation.
Virtues get no respect. Unlike sin and vice, which are loaded with razzmatazz, such qualities as temperance, chastity, and patience generally seem soberly straitlaced and la…
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Let the Grudges Begin – A Scotsman presents an alternative view of letting bygones be bygones.
Many years ago, when I was a boy editor at The New Republic, one of my elders wrote something about Gerald Ford — I don’t remember the details — and relate…
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Thinking Inside the Box – Charlotte Allen confesses her sins.
One of my most vivid memories of growing up Catholic before the Second Vatican Council is my second confession. Not my first confession. That was a pro forma ritual that too…
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