Jesus also made clear that we are to forgive those who sin against us. “How many times,” asks St. Peter, “Seven times?” “Seventy times seven,” responds Jesus in Matthew 18. In another parable he tells of the official who is forgiven a great debt and then punishes someone who cannot pay him a smaller debt. When the king finds out, he punishes the official. Or as Jesus teaches us in the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us on trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Considering how difficult it is to forgive, that is not a very smart prayer for us to keep repeating.

Thus the bias of the Christian community must be toward forgiveness. At the same time, the church has taught us that true repentance involves more than words. It involves a confession of guilt, sorrow for the offense, a firm commitment not to sin again, an attempt to right the wrong (restitution) and penance. Too often political apologies sound like “I am sorry that I was caught,” or “I am sorry you were offended,” or “I didn’t know what I was doing,” or “I didn’t do anything wrong, but as part of a plea bargain I have to plead guilty.” Asking for forgiveness when you are not really sorry and have no intention of reforming your life is a lie.

Most sins are not a single act isolated from the person’s life as a whole. In the case of Imus, there was a pattern of contempt for individuals and groups that preceded his comment on the Rutgers team. Any good confessor would challenge him to reflect on these attitudes and patterns (what we traditionally have called vices). He should be challenged not simply to be sorry for this one incident but to turn his whole life around. That this pattern was ignored by his networks, his advertisers and his audience shows a hardness of heart that also needs conversion.

The South African truth and reconciliation commission was very Catholic in requiring the confession of guilt before receiving amnesty. Amnesty for human rights offenses without confession is not Christian; it is a political cover-up.

In seeking forgiveness, Christians must also make sure that asking for forgiveness does not revictimize the victim. The classic case is the drunk who beats his wife and asks for forgiveness when he is sober, but then does it again and again. While in the past, pastors might tell a woman to repeatedly forgive her abusive husband, today we realize that the community has an obligation to protect her from this abuse. She has every right to kick her abusive husband out.

We must also be careful not to revictimize victims by asking them to forgive us. For example, Catholic bishops must be careful when asking victims of sexual abuse to forgive them. Sometimes it is better to say “I am sorry,” rather than to say “Please forgive me.” Asking for forgiveness can sometimes unfairly put a burden on the victim that they are not yet ready to handle.

Likewise Christians must be careful in how they speak to Jews about the actions or inactions of Christians during the holocaust. Contemporary Jews will rightly point out that the only people who can grant forgiveness (the victims) are no longer here. Better to say, “We are sorry.”

Granting forgiveness does not magically restore the world to the way it was before the sin took place. The ripples that sin sends through the world are almost impossible to stop. Nor does forgiveness mean that the sinner should not be punished or should be restored to all the privileges he had before he sinned.

If the Rutgers team forgives Imus, that should not clear the way for him going back on the air. Likewise the Catholic bishops recognized that priests who abused children had to be removed from ministry even if they had reformed their lives and could be good priests.

God can forgive, Christians are called to forgive, but in this world, sin has consequences.