rich writes:
<<So in Wiesenthal's story, the act of forgiving the Nazi would not
have
absolved the Nazi of his sins - that would be between him and God. >>

that's what rung false about the person who said, "let him die
unshriven." it's true that you sometimes go to a priest (or one of
maria's medieval ancestors, who had it as a profession, like chaucer's
pardoner), for the shriving ceremony, but the real forgiveness comes
from god. whether i forgive you, as you said, is a human issue and
matters on the interpersonal plane.


<<forgiving would have been an act
that would have affected Wiesenthal's heart, as he let go of anger and

hatred toward the Nazis. >>

but i think his point in the article was that it's dangerous to
forgive some things. i disagree, because i think that whether you
forgive the nazis or not is a separate issue from whether you remain
vigilant against injustice in the future. but at least that's the
reasoning.

btw, we have a rotten record on that count -- we keep saying with our
mouths that we'll 'never forget' the holocaust and that we'll never
let something like that ever happen again, but our actions over the
past half-century have shown that we're quite willing to stand by and
watch genocide after genocide.

--

barry
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