Opinion

A truth and reconciliation commission in Northern Ireland would require a high level of mutual trust

Requirements for reconciliation are the three fundamental principles of confession, the offer of reparation and forgiveness

The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu and President Mary McAleese. He wrote that if a victim could only forgive when the culprit confessed, then the victim would be locked into victimhood. Photograph: Eric Luke
The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu and President Mary McAleese. He wrote that if a victim could only forgive when the culprit confessed, then the victim would be locked into victimhood. Photograph: Eric Luke
Canon Ian Ellis
Sun Jun 30 2024 - 00:30

Human beings fail each other all the time. Betrayal of trust, wanton violence and dishonest dealings all are part of this failure scenario. When relationships are broken through an unjustified act or a crime, the Christian desire is to see healing. That hope reflects the belief that it is God’s desire to bring a morally broken humanity into a restored relationship with the wholly good divine life.

This year’s Templeton Prize was awarded to Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela in recognition of her work around trauma and forgiveness in post-apartheid South Africa. Prof Gobodo-Madikizela has spoken about the limitations of the word “forgiveness” suggesting that it fails to do justice to the whole process of a reconciling encounter. She sees empathy as key.

Speaking in a 2012 interview for the faith and leadership programme at Duke University, North Carolina, she remarked how when family members “encounter the remorse of the perpetrator, they encounter the perpetrator as a human being”, adding that that connection “really brings out and makes forgiveness possible in ways that are unexpected”. Prof Gobodo-Madikizela says empathy lies “at the core of these encounters”.

In a subsequent interview she emphasised that the importance of remorse is underestimated, describing it as a “reclaiming” of conscience that has been silenced at the time of wrongdoing.

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An offer of amends is a tangible expression of sorrow and signals the willingness to pay a price. Confession without at least an offer of reparation is incomplete

Similarly acknowledging the multidimensional nature of reconciliation, it can be seen as having three strands which all really need to be interwoven in order for there to be completely restored relationships. Perpetrator and victim each has a role to play.

The first part of this process is confession. The perpetrator needs to acknowledge that his or her action was wrong and to express remorse. The second part flows from this and it is reparation. An offer of amends is a tangible expression of sorrow and signals the willingness to pay a price. Confession without at least an offer of reparation is incomplete. The third part of the process is forgiveness. When a perpetrator expresses remorse and offers appropriate reparation, the Christian is obliged to express forgiveness in return. Just as confession is incomplete without an offer of reparation, so reconciliation is incomplete without all three aspects of this restorative process.

Unconditional forgiveness is often advocated as a way of releasing victims from the sorrow of an injustice committed against them and from any resentment towards the perpetrator. It is seen as a letting go of the bad experience.

In his book, God Has a Dream, the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote that if a victim could forgive only when the culprit confessed, then the victim would be locked into victimhood. Yet the focus in such a perspective is not on reconciliation as such, but on the victim’s own life experience in terms of the avoidance of destructive feelings.

Thus Tutu explained: “If someone steals my pen and then asks me to forgive him, unless he returns my pen the sincerity of his contrition and confession will be considered nil.”

The consequence here will be no real reconciliation. Indeed, a victim’s expression of forgiveness without a perpetrator’s remorse could easily be taken by the latter as an affront. However, the person wronged will always rightly avoid bitterness, as indeed was the example of Gordon Wilson, who said of those who murdered his daughter, Marie, in the Enniskillen bomb of 1987, that he bore then “no ill-will”.

The journalist Alf McCreary has written of how Wilson told him of the perpetrators: “Their crime was so heinous that only God can forgive them if they repent. But I pray for them every night.”

In terms of dealing with the legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, over the years there have been suggestions about a South Africa-style truth and reconciliation commission. Any such process, however adapted, would require a considerable level of mutual trust that all parties who said they were telling the truth would in fact be doing so. Furthermore, the requirements for actual reconciliation will always remain the three fundamental principles of confession, the offer of reparation, and forgiveness, a trio to which Tutu referred as part of the “continuum” of reconciliation.

Canon Ian Ellis is a former editor of The Church of Ireland Gazette. Alf McCreary wrote about Gordon Wilson in Keeping the Faith (Messenger Publications)