the right and power to forgive sin.
Now most of us have felt ashamed at some time or another, and most of us have managed to apologise, and experienced the partially restored mutual confidence between us and our friends which results. It does not need a parson to tell us about this sort of forgiveness. But there are people who are obsessed by guilt, and it is quite immaterial whether they think that they are so wicked that God can never forgive them, or whether they simply think they are unworthy to live. The fact about them which has to be accepted is that they are obsessed with themselves and their own guilt, and not with God or life or whoever it is that they think they have offended. I remember a man in the cells at Durham, who told me he felt so guilty he did not think he ought to be able to see, so he had stuck pins in his eyes. Forgiveness therefore, which in the Church is simply a question of persuading the victim that God takes a different view, begins by being the problem of how to communicate with a person who is wrapped in himself. Having achieved communication, the problem becomes how to persuade the victim to re-establish a balanced normal behaviour again towards the outside world, namely with other people. In the idiom we have been using so far, the problem is how to eradicate a particular kind of spasm in the consciousness.
Now this is essentially a technical problem in human relations, not an act of magic. And taking our cue from the parochially minded man, probably the best way of establishing communication is to concentrate entirely on the victim and his obsession however absurd, and to forget about oneself. The victim is unlikely to be bothered whether you have the apostolic succession or not, he wants you to attend to him; and probably your best tactics to start with are to humour him. He cannot see things from your point of view; with a bit of an effort you can see things from his. If you establish communication, you can…