Forgiveness and Mercy

Then Peter approaching asked him, "Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?"
Jesus answered, "I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times." ~ Mathew 18:21-22

The Wilderness

I have been a longtime fan of Tom Selleck and I am usually pleased with the characters he chooses to portray in his many movies and television shows.

So it was with utter dismay and sadness that I watched the most recent television episode of Bluebloods.

In this episode, Selleck's character Police Commissioner Regan, is called upon by a longtime friend who met with tragedy years ago when her family was brutally murdered. She was six years old at the time and the young woman is grown and about to get married. Life seems to be going well for her. She meets with the Commissioner and shows him a letter she has received from the person who committed the crime of murdering her family. She hasn't read the letter but gives it to him and asks him to read it.

She later asks him to tell her what's in it and he tells her that the criminal who is behind bars for the rest of his life wants to meet with her. It's because of a program called "Restorative Justice," that has been instituted by the penal system. The Commissioner tells her he doesn't advise it for her. He wants her to be happy and go about her life without the specter of meeting with the man who brutally murdered her family.

She leaves but later comes back and insists that she's going to meet the criminal. PC Regan tells her she isn't going alone because he can't see any good coming from this program for her, at least. He is thinking only of her and thinks that the man is playing some kind of mind game with her and that meeting with him will only haunt her for the rest of her life. She thinks that meeting him will allow her to put it behind her.

So, they go to the prison. The man tells her that he has a mental illness but that he has been properly diagnosed and because of proper medications can now realize the horror of the evil he committed against her. He doesn't expect her forgiveness but wanted to meet with her and tell her how truly sorry he is for that crime.

What comes out of the mouth of this young woman is the harshest kind of vile evil I have ever heard. She despises him and wishes that his attempts to end his life were successful. She insists on him looking at photos of the family she no longer has and jabs him with the punches that she will not be able to enjoy their company at her wedding. She asks that he attempt suicide again, only to make it a successful attempt. Her tirade is truly hateful.
Perhaps understandable, but what I failed to comprehend is that Selleck's character sat there and instead of being appalled by her spewing of this vileness merely nodded sagely, as if he completely agreed with the premises that she was extolling.

After this, the next scene is at her wedding and PC Regan gets up and extols the virtues of this young woman as if he had never heard the vile evil spewed forth by her just days before.
I found the whole episode to be a terrible example of what a "good Catholic" like PC Regan is supposed to be, what justice is and what compassion and mercy truly mean.
It could have been an example of how to forgive, how to be merciful, what compassion looks like, what Christianity and Catholicism truly is. Instead it was a cop-out to the secularism of the day.

Everyone seemed to think it was justified that she be allowed to spew hatred at the man who murdered her family, with the exception of Baker, the Commissioner's secretary. She believes people can change and tells the Commissioner so, even inviting him to fire her if she ever thinks otherwise.

I found Baker's view of the fallen nature of man to be more in line with authentic Catholic teaching. It is so difficult to forgive, especially when extreme hurt has been done. Yet, hanging onto hurt and wishing violence against another isn't healing. Instead of it being a healing event for anyone, it was the most tragic of episodes because hatred and vengeance never heal.

Only by forgiving can we escape the violence done us. Christ knows that and tries to show it by forgiving his executioners from the cross.