Melting the Icepacks of Enmity: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland

The virtue of forgiveness is controversial. Christianity’s affirmation of it is unusually pronounced. Nevertheless, common experience teaches that self-preservation requires the moderation of resentment; and Christian anthropology, self-reflection and history teach that compassion for perpetrators requires it too. This inner, psychological work of forgiveness is unilateral and unconditional, and I call it ‘forgiveness as compassion’. Some of the work of forgiveness is relational, however, and this should be reciprocal and conditional, refusing to open the door to reconciliation before repentance is forthcoming. I call this ‘forgiveness-as-absolution’. The Peace Process in Northern Ireland has seen little repentance and therefore should see little forgiveness-as-absolution and little reconciliation in the sense of full embrace. No truth commission will be able to achieve a shared interpretation of the past. In the form proposed by the 2009 report of the Consultative Group on the Past (CGP), however, it could help to ‘reconcile’ Unionists to the Peace Process and all parties to a different future. In addition to these attenuated forms of reconciliation, forgiveness-as-compassion could also find expression via the CGP’s ‘recognition payment’ to the families of all those killed in the Troubles, and in transgressions of tribal boundaries such as the attendance of the enemy’s public remembrance ceremonies.