Allow me to indulge in a public confession: of all the tenets of Catholicism, the one I struggle with the most is forgiveness. We are called to forgiveness – and through confession we seek it ourselves – but it challenges me. I recognise that such tension suggests importance: forgiveness is a radical act and request. Yet I am unable to reconcile it with what often feels like the messy reality of life.
For those reasons, I was drawn to a new book, Forgiveness: An Alternative Account, by Matthew Ichihashi Potts (Yale University Press). Potts is a theologian with a compelling backstory. A Navy veteran and an Episcopal clergyman who has ministered in other Protestant churches, he was intellectually formed in a Catholic space – the University of Notre Dame – before earning his doctorate at Harvard. He has written of Cormac McCarthy’s sacramental sense. Clearly, Potts is interested in how Catholicism shapes essential writers of contemporary fiction.
