Faulting no-fault forgiveness

THE communities in
Littleton, Colorado,
and Taber, Alberta, or
at least those members
that routinely present
themselves to the
media, are now indi-
cating their readiness
to forgive the murder-
ers.

The spasms of no-fault
forgiveness are, however,
more a distillation of the
mass culture than a distilla-
tion of any real religious sen-
sibility.

In Littleton, Colorado,
the first sign of people adrift
ina moral twilight zone was
the erection by a local car-
penter of two symbolic
crasses for the killers along-
side their victims.

“They too had a mom
and a dad,” preached the
carpenter.

Ditto for Karla Homolka
and Paul Bernardo. Does the
fact these sociopaths were
born of man and woman
entitle them to share a moral
plateau with their victims?
Evidently, that is the case.

The father of a slain boy
who promptly uprooted and
destroyed the crosses “raised
in memory of the two
teenage gunmen” was clearly
not the hero of this particu-
lar transparent news story.

The real heroes were the
bevy of fresh-faced youths
and the adults accompanying
them who all, following the
carpenter’s example, spoke
of forgiveness.

The rationale for instant

clemency?
" “Like, the killers were
victims too,” and the ubiqui-
tous mantra “We all need to
heal.”

If in Littleton the killers
were embraced, in Taber the
moral tempo was not much
different.

The atmosphere was
muted, tempered by
Canadian gentiliry, but it
had the same stark clements
of moral deconstruction.

“Close friends of the J
year-old boy charged ...
the fatal shooting” swore
fealty to their friend, and
expressed the view that the
bullying their friend endured
was a licence to kill.

Finally the poor Reverend

mailbox

comment

Dale Lang, whose son Jason
died atthe hands af the
Killer, extended his well-
meant forgiveness to the
tuurderer

In so charitably rorgiving
and embracing killers, well-
meaning individuals and
clergy are not only usurping
the power of the God whose

“Can anyone
claim to know
what ‘letting the
community grieve
and get on with
the healing
process’ really

means?”

mercy they claim to repre:
sent, but are showing, if any-
thing, religious doctrinal fail-
ure.

The Jewish perspective
pivots on the “passion for
justice,” writes Rabbi B.
Isaacson in the International
Jewish Encyclopedia.

Although justice has to
be tempered by love and
mercy, justice always “pre-
cedes mercy,” and is a pre-
requisite for mercy.

This is extremely lucid,
because mercy without jus-
tice is not mercy at all. By
forgiving a killer, before he
has made amends and paid
for a crime, injustice is done
to the victim, to suciety, and
inadvertently to the killer for
whom redemption can be
achieved only by facing the
consequences of his actions.

To place the memory of a
killer, posthumously, on the
same moral plateau as his
victim by according him the
mantle of victim is to imperil
society by inverting the
healthy moral order so that
with cach easy act of forgive-
ness murder becomes a little

less abhorrent.

Punishment, therefore, is
less a deterrene than it isa
public declaration of those
values we want upheld.

A Jew is not obliged to
forgive a transgressor ualess
that transgressor has ceased
his harmful actions, compen:
sated the victim for damages,
and asked forgiveness.

This is both ethically ele-
gant and psychologically
smart, It makes the process
of asking for and extending,
forgiveness meaningtul and
lends it powerfid social
approval.

It alse upholds the notion
of right and wrong. Further,
there is no obligation to
show the incongruent emo-
tion of compassion to some-
one that has murdered,
raped or committed some
other heinous act.

One can forgive, but one
doesn’t have to, What one
has to ensure is that justice is
done.

In their Orthodoxy col-
umn of July 1998, Ted and
Virginia Byticld of the B.C.
(aud Alberta) Report, imply
that the Christian doctrine is
very similar to the Jewish
one.

Yhe couple stresses that
instant expiation Hows more
from the values of the 1960s
than any doctrinaire
Christian values.

Christian forgiveness,
accordingly, is contingent on
the sinner’s repentance and
can be granted only by the
one sinned against and not
by the various proxies-of-
popularity.

The Byfields go on to
point out that “the corollary
of the current” practice of
instant forgiveness is that “
not only abolishes the neces-
sity of repentance, it abolish-
es sin itself.”

Another distinction that
has been blissfully fudged is
the one between private and
communal grief. Entire com-
munities are said to be in the
throes of some paroxysmal
tribal grief.

Can anyone claim to
know what “letting the com-
mufity grieve and get on
with the healing process”
really means?

Princess Diana’s death
gave a glimpse into the mas-
sive contagion of grief that

Sport takes toll on family life

Dear Editor:

1 write to congratulate
Graham Hookey on bringing
to the fore his concern with
some aspects of competitive
league sports (May 5 News).

My questions regarding
the leagues spring from the
demands they place on a fam-
ily’s schedule, and the shift in
family priorities that often
results.

I have nieces and nephews
in the Fraser Valley who I
rarely see due to their soccer
and baseball commitments.
Efforts to visit their family for
a weekend lunch or barbecue
are always frustrated by their
sports schedule, and our
hopes to sce them at Easter
and Thanksgiving gatherings
often dashed by weckend-
long sports tournaments.

For many families, orga-
nized sports can be a great
complement to their sched-
ule, and I don’t question their
choice or the benefits team

play can bring. With five chil-
dren in’ my own family,
though, I know it would be
impossible to fit in the leisure
activities I deem important for
their growth if we were tied to
a lengthy sports commitment.

Spontancous events with
friends, family outings and
bike rides, hanging out with
the cousins, birthday parties
and church activities keep our
weekends full as ir is — and
that’s before we try to fit in
homework and laundry!

The lack of time for free
play that can result from regis-
tering children in a variety of
extracurricular activities is also
beginning to be of concern
for noted pediatricians and
educators such as T. Berry
Brazclton, who says that kids
are being seriously short-
changed of the unstructured
play that teaches them to
think independently and
negotiate their relationships
with their peers.

It can sometimes be diffi-
cult to say “no” to your
child’s request to participate
in a sport, as many harried
parents will attest. But as a
person who has exercised that
right, maintaining the free-
dom of choice when it comes
to how my family spends its
time together on the weekend
is well worth it - for all of us.

Perhaps the many fine,
hardworking coaches of local
leagues could start to ques-
tion the necessity for holiday
weekend tournaments. Or
Remembrance Day games.

And maybe the playing
field squeeze could be alleviat-
ed, and family life rendered
less fragmented, if the whole
pace of the schedule was
slowed down. Why not a
game one week, and a practice
the next week, instead of both
each week? Worth a thought,
I hope.

Peggy Trendell-Jensen
trenjen@bc.sympatico.ca

convulsed the entire world.

Was it genuine?

Ifthe showing at her
memorial a vear later was
any indication, then no, it
WwasHl.

Justifiable moments of
genuine public grief thar
come to mind are the ones
following the deaths of lead-
ers tke Martin Luther King
Jr. JFK, and Rabin, as their
passing threatened to leave
people without a vision, ora
dream, and in the midst of
an historical transition.

Members of the ‘Taber
and Colorado communities
can legitimately Jay claim to
the contusion that comes

‘with a loss of a previously

enjoyed sense of security,
and a loss of innocence.

Otherwise the spectacle
of swaths of people, not
direetly affected by the
tragedy, yet performing the
rites that should be reserved
for the family is wrong.

Inspired by the prototype
of group therapy, in which
every individual's “pain” is
equally weighted, it is noth-
ing but a greedy appropria-
tion of what is a family’s pri-
vate rite.

The community might be
shocked, reeling. But the
families of the dead alone are
grief struc!

ry day that
dawns, the family that has
lost a child faces the kind of
pain most of us do not
know,

Members of the commu-
nity should relinquish their
fake “grieving process,” and
cook a meal, do the laundry,
or simply sit in silence with
those whose sorrow is
beyond comprehension.
That done, they should fade
into the background.

— gnome@aticanada.net

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