On Forgiveness

by Rebecca Bynum (February 2013)

excellent article written by Theodore Dalrymple and published in City Journal in which he discusses an openly exhibitionist display of forgiveness by a woman named Marian Partington who claimed in her book to forgive her sister’s torture and murder at the hands of a notorious serial-murdering couple, Frederick and Rosemary West. She details her struggle to forgive Rosemary West specifically, who had not sought her forgiveness and indeed returned her letters with a request that Partington cease all correspondence with her. Ms. Partington nevertheless proceeded to write a book about her inner quest to forgive Mrs. West, presented, and no doubt marketed, as climbing the Mt. Everest of forgiveness, for who could forgive a thing like that but the most forgiving person in the world?

The effect of forgiveness by a human being on the one forgiven varies greatly. The person forgiven may feel such gratitude that his whole life is altered from that moment, or the person may simply mock the forgiver, holding forgiveness as nothing. Rosemary West was not seeking forgiveness. It meant nothing to her.

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