As Christians, do you feel you can forgive anything and everything? (page 2)

This is a tough question and I hesitated to respond to it. We pray the Lord's Prayer at Mass every day. In it, Jesus taught us to pray, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." So being forgiven for our sins is dependent upon our willingness to forgive others.

But it's not easy to forgive others and to accept them back into the fold. For instance, right now there is a man at my parish whom I really like. He is witty, intelligent, a joy to talk to, and truly seems to love the Lord. He also is a priest who was a Canon Lawyer and has been defrocked because he abused a child. I was sexually abused as a child, and the child this priest abused is not part of my parish, thank God, but I have difficulty dealing with this. However, many of the priests who have been defrocked have not publicly admitted their sins. This man has. He has taken his punishment, taken it publicly, and doesn't try to hide. He just tries to make himself as useful as possible to our parish. He's a brilliant man, very well educated, and I've been thinking about asking our actual parish priest if this man could lead an all-adult Bible study in the fall. So long as it's all adults, I think it would be okay. It's an opportunity for us as a parish to show that Christian virtue of love and forgiveness toward this man.

However, my childhood abuse is hard to overcome. I'm still struggling with this. Sometimes I think God put this man in my path to help me deal with the fact that I haven't forgiven my abuser. I don't know. But it's a tough question. Could the boy this priest abused forgive him? Could the boy's family forgive him? How would the boy's family feel about the ex-priest being allowed to lead a parish Bible study, which is a position of responsibility of sorts? Lots of questions, no answers.

So my answer is, I don't know if I can forgive anything and everything. But I know that, if I want to be forgiven for my sins, I need to work on being more forgiving towards others.

StAnn

As Christians, do you feel you can forgive anything and everything?

mouthy

StAnn

Share this