Welcome, everyone.
My name is doctor Steven Grundman.
I teach integrative studies in our doctorate in psychology program.
I'll be your emcee tonight.
First, just a few brief words about our question and answer period.
As questions occur to you during the lecture, please feel free to write them in the Zoom chat box or in the Zoom q and a function, which you'll find in your control bar.
We'll take a brief, break just after the lecture, just a a a moment or two really, and then we'll jump right into the to your to your questions after, doctor Enright finishes.
And so, please allow me to introduce the Newman lecture series itself.
This is held under the sponsorship of Divine Mercy University, and, it is in its twenty third year.
As is our tradition, this series aims at building a body of learned discussion that is Catholic both in its breadth of research and in its dialogue with contemporary Catholic Christian thought.
And now I invite our president, father Charles Sikorsky, to open us in prayer.
Father Charles.
Well, thank you, doctor Grundmann.
And let's begin with a prayer in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Heavenly father, we approach you during this time of Lent, time of repentance, time to reflect on our own sins and failures.
But most of all, the power of your grace, the power of your forgiveness, the power of the reconciliation that we get from turning to you with humility, turning to you, as our father who loves us and wants us to be very close, to you.
We thank you for this opportunity this evening to learn more about the power of forgiveness, to learn more in how we can forgive others and how by doing so helps us to grow as a as as human beings, but more so as children your children, children of God, and how through the virtue of forgiveness, we become transformed.
We become stronger.
We become more and more, most of all, like you and like your son, our lord Jesus Christ, who from the cross forgave those who were persecuting him, those who were taking his life.
And so as we prepare, we pray for our presenter tonight that you will guide him and help us to grasp more and more of your divine wisdom, your divine presence, and learn more and more how we can better serve you, better serve all our souls with whom we have contact, those who've been entrusted to us in a special way to be influenced so we can bring them more and more to your son, our lord Jesus Christ.
We thank you for this evening.
We thank you for this time, and we ask for your blessing and for the Holy Spirit to guide us in this evening.
In the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Thank you, father Charles.
Now please welcome, doctor Paul Vitz who will introduce our speaker for the evening.
Doctor Vitz.
Thank you.
It's a pleasure to introduce, doctor Enright.
He's been a a friend of mine for a long time.
I've been aware of his importance for a long time, and so now I get the honor to be able to read some of the important things that, in fact, have occurred in his life as a result of his work on forgiveness.
Doctor.
Robert Enright holds the Aristotelian Professorship in Forgiveness Science within the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
He is a licensed psychologist and founder of the International Forgiveness Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to disseminating knowledge about forgiveness and community renewal through forgiveness.
He is the first to publish a scientific study on the topic of person to person forgiveness in 1989.
He is the first to publish research on forgiveness therapy in 1993 as he developed the 20 step process model of forgiving.
He has been called the forgiveness trailblazer by Time magazine.
Doctor Enright is the author or editor of eight books and over 190 publications centered on social development and above all, the psychology of forgiveness.
His latest endeavors include forgiveness education for students in various world communities, for example, Israel, Monrovia, Northern Ireland, The Philippines, and Taiwan, and forgiveness therapy with those in correctional institutions, that is with prisoners and criminals.
His colleague, Richard Fitzgibbons, and he received the third edition of the Expanded Reason Award through the University of Francisco de Vittoria, Madrid, Spain, in collaboration with the Joseph Ratzinger Benedict the sixteenth Foundation, which is in Rome, For his innovative research on forgiveness, and he received in 2022 what the American Psychological Association calls psychology's highest award, the APF, that is the American Psychological Foundation's Gold Medal Award for Impact in Psychology.
This is all wonderful, and Doctor.
Enright has been the pioneer in getting all this done.
Thank you.
Alright.
Doctor Enright, please, please begin your presentation.
Thank you.
Well, thank you very much, doctor Vitz.
I should mention he has won the fourth annual expanded reason award for his wonderful work.
So thank you to you and to Divine Mercy University for your important work.
Tonight, I wanna talk with you with this long title of how injustices can fracture the personhood of the victim and how forgiveness restores that personhood and psychological health.
And in the next slide, you will see our objectives for this evening.
And so if we could turn to the next slide, you'll see that first of all, we're gonna talk about what I call unhealthy anger or resentment that builds up, is intensive, and stays with a person for a long time.
And the kind of anger I'm talking about that's born out of injustice can actually compromise mental and physical health.
We're gonna talk about that.
And if forgiveness toward those who acted unjustly can actually reduce or eliminate that unhealthy anger that abides for a long time, it is intensive.
And if it can restore psychological integrity, then you and I together really must examine what forgiveness is and is not so we don't misunderstand what this topic of forgiveness is.
Quite frankly, when I give talks like this, most people don't really understand what forgiveness is.
We use the term, but we haven't gone into the subtlety of it.
We will do that.
We'll ask what are the benefits that occur when people engage in forgiving, and then how do we go about actually forgiving others?
What's the pathway of forgiving?
And then how does it actually restore our humanity?
That's the title of the talk, and I wanna talk about that.
And then I wanna share with you a Catholic perspective on what forgive us forgiveness is and how that Catholic perspective can actually restore the humanity of persons.
So in the next slide, I ask you an important question.
What is the difference between healthy and unhealthy anger?
Let's take a look at that in this next slide.
There's been a review of the literature and a meta analysis that we'll see in this next slide of 24 studies, 24 of them.
And here's what the authors conclude.
I'm quoting, we found that irritability, that's that large amount of anger that abides in the heart for a long time, forms a distinct dimension with substantial stability across time and that it is specifically associated with what?
With depression and anxiety in longitudinal studies.
So that's enough to get our attention.
Let's take a look at the next slide, and we're gonna continue this theme of unhealthy anger.
Some researchers, you can see there, Thomas et al, have found that extremely low anger scores, in other words, anger that's suppressed or repressed, or to use a colloquial term, stuffed within the heart of a person, actually can be connected with, as you see in that quote, the development of cancer.
And, also, it's a factor in the progression after diagnosis.
So we've got these two slides, and they're both saying this large amount of anger that abides in you can be unhealthy for you.
And let's take a look at one more slide and just to make the point here.
And then this next one we see that anger studies show, can actually impact our immune system.
So if we stay too angry too long, we are more susceptible to colds, flu's infections, asthma, skin disease, and their flare up, and asthma as compared to people who are not chronically angry.
Deep abiding anger, when treated unjustly by others, can be harmful to you.
The next slide, we can see kind of the beginning of this talk now.
It seems to be the case when I look at the literature that when there is un this kind of unhealthy anger I'm not talking about short term anger where someone disrespects you and you have a little bit of anger.
That's good because it shows you know you're a person who need should be treated with respect.
But when it starts taking hold within you and it doesn't let go and it doesn't know how to leave, where anger becomes the unwelcomed guest in the human heart, look at these bullet points here.
Here's what I tend to see.
People tend to say, I don't like myself when you're treated in a very unjust way by others.
People say, I don't have worth as a person.
You don't have worth as a person because people have treated you badly.
Sadly, that's a conclusion people reach.
There's oftentimes a breakdown in trust in relationships where if a person is hurt by person a, that person who's hurt says I cannot trust person b, c, or d and cannot enter into healthy relationships anymore.
So it can harm future relationships.
And what it can do is help a person in a bad way develop a victim mentality, a victim identity.
Your identity can be that of someone victimized, always victimized, and that's who you are predominantly.
And it can also end up with a development of a norm that it's alright to express anger in inappropriate ways, passing that on to others, which means a breakdown in community.
And so is there a cure for unhealthy anger?
I asked that in the next slide.
Let's take a look at that question.
Is there a cure for unhealthy anger, the kind that builds up in your heart, is the unwelcome guest, and doesn't know how to leave?
Here's an answer to that in the next slide with my friend and colleague, doctor Richard Fitzgibbons, with whom I have written the book Forgiveness Therapy.
He provided a lot of the very rich case study material in his psychiatric practice, and I provided the egghead professor stuff with my research on forgiveness.
And we find that the practice of forgiveness when you're treated very deeply unfairly by others can actually reduce or even eliminate that unhealthy anger.
Some call it resentment.
Some call it irritability.
And can deal with and help restore self esteem and reduce anxiety and depression and establish a certain sense of cooperation, not not necessarily with the one with whom you've had problems, although that's a goal.
The other has to cooperate for that to happen, but it can also lead to greater cooperation with others who weren't part of the original injustice.
So forgiveness is so important.
Let's ask the question in the next slide.
What do we mean by forgiveness?
And we have some answers in the next four slides.
In the next slide, I make the point that forgiveness is a choice.
It's your choice.
In other words and what I really like about forgiveness is there's no law anywhere in the world, in any society, that says you must forgive.
And if you don't forgive, you're gonna get a ticket.
If you don't forgive, we'll arrest you.
No.
Forgiveness is always your choice to do as you wish, when you wish, and with whom.
And I think that gives you a freedom to go ahead and forgive or not.
And the next slide we see, I learned this one from Aristotle.
As doctor Vitz said, I hold the Aristotelian professorship because of my buddy, Aristotle, from a little while ago, the March.
And I lean on Aristotle for my learning, for my knowledge of what forgiveness is.
And he taught me that forgiveness is a moral virtue.
A moral virtue, according to the catechism of the Catholic church, is a sign of goodness, motivated, willed with feelings and thinking directed toward others for their good.
And if forgiveness is something that is moving toward others for goodness, then it's a moral virtue as is justice or kindness or patience or love.
And we see in the next slide another thing why I like forgiveness.
It cuts across many different philosophies and world religions.
Forgiveness is seen as something positive in the Hebrew culture with Joseph forgiving his half brothers.
Certainly, in Christianity, as an example, the prodigal son returning home and being embraced by his father.
You see the positives in Buddhism.
Even though there is not a word for forgiveness, there are stories that show what they call loving kindness or compassion for those who are not kind to you and in Hinduism.
And even in the idea of humanism, there's the idea that at least there's the natural virtue of forgiveness, not necessarily the theological virtue where you need god's grace, where you can be good to others if you choose to do so.
And so forgiveness cuts across many different world views and religions that have withstood the test of time.
And it's it's positive in all of these I've just mentioned.
So with that in mind, let's turn to the next slide where I am going to attempt a definition of forgiveness that I definitely think would be acceptable to people in a lot of different world views, a lot of different religions.
So if we could turn to that next slide, you'll see that we have, a definition of forgiveness that encompasses three different points.
And so could we turn to that next slide, please?
Are we frozen?
Oh, there we go.
Okay.
Very good.
The definition of forgiveness can encompass three different points that would be fundamentally agreed upon by many of the world religions.
First of all, we've been treated, unjustly by another person or persons.
We strive to get rid of something negative, which is that resentment or that ill will that's persistent.
So we get rid of the negative.
And as the third bullet point, we strive as best we can.
Here's where the notion of the moral virtue comes in.
We strive to offer goodness of some kind to the one or the ones who have heard us.
And this goodness can take the form, for example, of kindness or respect or generosity or even on its highest level, moral love or what the Greeks call agape, a g a p e.
And that's the highest form of love, and you also see that in the New Testament where the idea of forgiveness as suffering for the other, for the good of the other.
But that doesn't mean we all hit the highest target when we forgive.
Don't think that unless you have this loving service to others, even when it's painful to do so, you're not forgiving.
Because remember, if you're striving to get rid of the built up anger toward the other, you are forgiving.
But the third bullet point shows us the highest level, and agape love is on the highest level of what forgiveness is.
So with that in mind, let's turn to the next slide.
What forgiveness is not?
Forgiveness is not making excuses for the other and say, oh, I'm gonna forgive you because you didn't really mean it.
Oh, well, sorry.
Sometimes people really do mean to hurt us, and we don't make excuses.
And what we say is what happened was unfair is unfair and will always be unfair.
We don't excuse it.
We don't forget.
I know we use the term forgive and forget, but we remember in new ways.
You don't remember just blood out from memory trauma against you.
Take a physical trauma.
For example, if you broke your leg when you were 10 years old, you can remember it, but in new ways without all that pain and fear that you might have had as a 10 year old.
So you don't forget.
You forgive and remember in new ways.
And this next point is very important because equating forgiveness with reconciliation gives forgiveness a bad name.
It gives it a black eye.
Forgiveness is a moral virtue of one person deciding, being motivated, and willing goodness toward another.
Reconciliation in contrast is not a moral virtue.
It's a negotiation strategy between two or more people coming together again in mutual trust.
So you can forgive but not reconcile if the other keeps hitting you over the head with a frying pan, and you keep saying stop that, and they say, no.
I'm having fun with that.
You can forgive and get out of the way and watch your back and not reconcile.
And another thing that gives forgiveness a black eye is people think in either or terms.
Either you forgive or seek justice, but not both.
No.
Aristotle taught me that you don't practice moral virtues in isolation from other moral virtues.
Forgiveness and justice grow up together.
So you can forgive a person for hitting you over the head with a frying pan and ask the person to stop.
So you are forgiving.
And what's that?
Being good to the person who's not good to you, getting rid of the resentment when you have that big knot on your head, and now with justice seeking, get the person to put down the frying pan.
So I made a lot of claims about forgiveness.
And now when we turn to the next slide, I have an important question for all of you.
What is the evidence from randomized experimental and control group clinical trials that forgiveness actually improves the well-being of the one who forgives.
I have five bullet points in the next slide, and I'll just go through these briefly because each of these is a study we have done where we walk people through this process model of forgiveness that we'll go through next.
And here are the here's the evidence.
First of all, Suzanne Friedman and I worked with incest survivors.
That's one of the most horrendous injustices known to humankind because a father or a father figure who is supposed to protect violates.
It's much crueler.
It's a much deeper wound than if someone robs you on the street and you've never seen that person before.
That person still shouldn't do that, but that person is not in the role of the protective father.
With incest, she is violated by the father or father figure who's supposed to protect.
And every one of the incest survivors, 12 of them, who came into our study, said they wouldn't forget.
They were very kind to Suzanne Friedman and said, I'm gonna be the one who's going to mess up your study because I'm not gonna forgive the father or father figure.
Suzanne and her kindness had come in anyway.
She worked one on one with six incest survivors once a week for an hour for fourteen months, 54 sessions.
That's how long it can take to forgive sometimes, everybody.
You don't just turn on a light bulb and say, oh, that's my forgiving light.
I've forgiven and shut off the light and go out and play.
No.
Forgiveness is walking a path.
It's growing in the moral virtue, and that's what these courageous women did.
And at the end of fourteen months, those who walked the forgiveness path, those six of them, not only forgave, they all forgave, they came to us with clinical depression, and they all ended up nondepressed.
They didn't just improve in depression.
The depression left.
Their anxiety went down.
Their hope for the future went up.
And you know who they ended up liking?
Themselves.
Because you see, you can be so cruelly treated by others that you end up believing the lie, and you end up not liking yourself.
Their self esteem was restored.
But what about those in the control group who didn't have forgiveness therapy for over a year?
They could still seek treatment wherever they wished, and they did, but they still, at the end of that time, were still clinically depressed.
Suzanne Friedman then brought them through the forgiveness program, and you know what happened?
They forgave and went to nondepressed status.
They started liking themselves.
All 12 got their lives back.
And the first group that after that first fourteen months did not have forgiveness therapy anymore for the next fourteen months, they were still non depressed.
It stayed with them.
Gail Reed and I did a study of divorced emotionally abused women with similar results.
Decreased anxiety and depression, post traumatic stress disorder symptoms went down.
And who did they end up liking everybody?
Themselves.
They ended up first believing the lie, you see, and they stopped believing the lie that they were worthless.
They ended up reconstituting a large part of their humanity.
Third bullet point, we worked with cardiac patients, all men, on a cardiac unit of a hospital.
And all of them had, of course, heart compromise where when they told their story of injustice against them, the arteries of the heart narrowed, so they had less blood flow through the heart.
After 10 sessions, the experimental group forgave people who hurt them deeply.
And when we hooked them up to the heart monitors again and they retold their story, after a ten week follow-up, it took ten weeks after the therapy ended for the physical improvements to occur.
When they told their story of deep hurt, you know what happened?
Their arteries stayed open.
What about the control group who had heart health as usual in a hospital setting?
Their arteries still would shrink down.
They had less blood flow through the heart still.
Doctor Douglas Russell, the physician who oversaw this study said, we helped the men to avoid chest pains and sudden death.
It's the first study ever published showing a cause and effect relationship between learning to forgive and the improvement in a major organ of the body.
Think about that.
Forgiving improved the physical, monitoring of the heart.
I find that rather extraordinary, actually, especially when we split the mind body in modern medicine.
Well, we put those two together, and it worked.
And what led the day here?
Forgiving.
Fourth of five bullet points, we worked with terminally ill cancer patients only four weeks because they were sadly dying.
They didn't have a lot of energy.
We couldn't keep going with them.
So we did four weeks of a complete forgiveness program.
And at the end of that, they forgave family members who had hurt them, and they ended up with less anger and more hope for the future.
Think about that.
They were dying, and they had more hope for the future.
Why?
Because they oftentimes would bring family members to their bedside, reconcile knowing that when they pass, they were leaving their family in a better place.
Right?
So their psychological state was going up and improving as their physical state went down and they all did eventually pass away.
And one of our most recent forgiveness interventions was with men in a maximum security correctional institution.
Six months of the program where I'll I'll explain that next.
And they also improved in forgiving.
They became less angry, less anxious, less depressed.
They went from clinical levels of anger, anxiety, and depression to nonclinical levels of anger, anxiety, and depression, and their sense of empathy toward others in general.
Empathy toward others increased.
People tell me that in maximum security corrections, that's almost unheard of.
The control group that had the handpicked intervention by the correctional institution still were clinically angry, anxious, and depressed.
They then went through the six month forgiveness program, and the clinical levels of anger, anxiety, and depression left them.
It's the strongest results ever published in a maximum security prison anywhere in the world showing effects that are very positive in the psychological sense.
Because usually, it's such a harsh environment, you don't see this.
Forgiveness help them get their life back.
So with all of that in mind, the general conclusion is the science shows forgiveness is very efficacious in helping people with mental and emotional compromise.
So how do people forgive?
Let's take a peek at that next slide.
How do people forgive?
And what we're going to do is we're gonna go through what I call four phases.
But here's a preliminary question that I have in the next slide.
If you're going to forgive and you're not gonna be able to forgive someone who searched you deeply in the, you know, fifteen minutes or so that we go through this, but you'll see the road map.
Right?
I'd ask people to study this road map and then to practice it.
Aristotle tells me we perfect ourselves without ever reaching perfection in this moral virtue that's tough, but he called magnanimity by practice, practice, practice.
So but first of all, think about someone who's hurt you and be sure there really was an injustice that you just didn't mistake something.
And just think about someone for a moment, and then we go to our first phase, first of four phases in the next slide.
And that's what we call the uncovering of your anger.
And this is looking at the effects, not looking at the injustice itself.
This is a very important distinction, everybody.
In this first phase, we don't put what happened to you under a microscope.
We look at the effects.
And you know what I have found in studying forgiveness for thirty seven years?
The effects of injustice against you oftentimes are worse than the injustice itself.
As an example, when soldiers are fighting on a battlefield, that can be very high stress, especially if they encounter a lot of injustices.
When is suicidal ideation or suicidal attempts occurring with veterans?
Right.
When they're veterans, after injustices.
And so it seems to me that the injustices are grave, and they can be very troublesome, but it's living with the effects afterwards that is even worse.
For example, we ask people, have you faced your anger, your unhealthy anger, the toxic anger, the abiding anger.
A lot of times, people aren't aware of the depth of it.
And I usually ask, I'm like, a one to 10 scale.
How angry are you?
When they break through denial, they oftentimes realize they're more angry than they realize.
Another effect oftentimes is shame.
If someone abandons you or you lose a job out of unfairness, you feel like you wanna hide under the bed.
That's what shame basically is because you don't want the light shown upon you and people whispering, oh, what did that person do to to, deserve that?
Well, maybe you did nothing to deserve it, but people will whisper anyway, and you don't deserve the shame as an effect.
Oftentimes, people's health is affected.
Do you know what the most frequent health complaint I get when I talk with people about injustices?
Fatigue.
You see, if you're carrying around on your back a big, big, pack of resentments, a big, big pack of, anger.
Well, you're gonna be tired carrying around that package of anger and resentment or even hatred all the time.
And carrying that around with you makes you tired, and quite frankly, you don't deserve that.
See, that's another effect.
And then yet another effect, and this is a dangerous one, so really be careful with this one, is what I call a changed world view.
You might end up going from loving god to blaming god.
God isn't the one who treated you unjustly, everybody.
It's the free will decision of fallen humanity that got to you, not god himself.
And yet people might say that, and then they'll leave the church as an example.
And they're going in the wrong direction, and you see how the effects are getting them to think irrationally, blaming a just holy god who could never behave unjustly and pinning the blame there.
And if you don't go to that level, you can go to a generalized level about humanity and say, no person can be trusted.
Or if it's a romantic relationship, no man can be trusted.
No woman can be trusted.
And so there's a generalization of the worldview that then can affect your happiness.
It can affect your salvation even if you make the wrong choice and have the worldview that blames god.
So that's phase one, the uncovering phase.
The next slide go we go to phase two, which is deciding to forgive.
We make a decision.
Do we wanna walk through this door of forgiveness?
If you are going to do that, we go over what forgiveness is.
You've been treated unjustly.
You'll be working on getting rid of resentment.
You'll try as best you can to offer goodness.
You won't be excusing.
You won't be, forgetting.
You won't necessarily be reconciling, and you won't abandon justice.
Do you want to do that?
And when people say yes, we give a homework assignment.
As you walk from this lecture, if you want to make a decision to forgive, here's my homework assignment for you.
Try as best you can to three little words.
Do no harm to the one who hurt you.
Do no harm.
And that could be even subtly putting the person down to others.
Try not to do that.
I'm not saying don't talk to others about the person.
Just don't disparage the person.
Put that person down.
Drag that person through the mud.
Try to commit to do no harm, which then gets us to the third phase.
In the next slide, we start with thinking exercises because thinking is easier to move toward than feeling.
And we have three different approaches.
One we call the personal perspective, another global, and the other cosmic perspective.
The personal perspective asks you as the one who was treated unjustly to see the history of woundedness in the one who hurt you.
How was this person raised?
What happened there where the person's heart was pierced or in adolescence with the peer group or in early adulthood, maybe at work or in a romantic relationship gone bad, where the person might have gotten confused, embittered, alienated with a worldview that isn't helpful, and you were the recipient of it?
Do you see the woundedness in the other?
The global perspective gets more abstract and asks this question.
Are both of you part of the human condition?
Do you both have unique DNA?
If both of you cut, do you bleed?
Do you both need adequate nutrition and rest?
Will you both die one day?
If you are so unique that you have unique DNA and you're so special in even in that biological way where there's never been a human being like you ever on the planet, you have, by definition, built in worth as a person.
How about the one who hurt you?
If you are special, unique, and irreplaceable, is it true about the one who hurt you?
Right?
You both share a common humanity together.
And then we move to the cosmic perspective only for those who have a spiritual worldview.
We don't go here for the atheist or agnostic or humanist who doesn't have a faith based or a spiritual perspective.
But for those who do, we then ask a question such as this.
So for those of you with a Catholic, Christian, spiritual perspective, here's a question for you.
Is it true or not that you are made in the image and likeness of God?
Well, it says so in the first book of the Old Testament.
It says so in Genesis, and it's repeated in Genesis.
It says it twice there.
Everyone is made in the image and likeness of God.
So does if you are made in the image and likeness of God, does that mean the one who hurt you gasped, gulp?
Does that mean that person is made in the image and likeness of God?
Some people say to me when they're on the early walking of forgiveness, oh, I wish I didn't hear that.
That's a hard one to see this person is made in the image and likeness of god.
I've already written the person off.
Right.
You're constructing that person's humanity again in your own mind, heart, and soul.
And in doing so, you're also reconstructing your own.
And so when you put all three perspectives together, tell the story of this person who's been wounded by others, confused, perhaps alienated.
You share a common humanity, and you're both made in the image and likeness of god.
What does that do to your heart?
It oftentimes softens a little bit, and that's where the second bullet point comes in.
There's compassion there.
And then once you get a little stronger in these thinking exercises and the feeling exercise of being aware of the compassion in your heart when you tell the story broadly.
See, we're expanding your story of who the other is.
We ask you to bear the pain or accept the pain.
And you stand up in the pain so you don't throw the pain back onto the other person.
And that is the beginning of getting stronger, knowing you won't be crushed by that sack of voles on your back.
You won't be crushed by that heavy weight on your back.
You're standing, and you are standing for the other so you don't throw that pain back to the other.
Remember, that's what this is all about, goodness toward the other.
By the way, those of you who have a Christian perspective, do you just happen to have a model, hint hint, wink wink, of a person standing in the pain for you?
Right.
Jesus Christ stood in the pain for you.
Can you stand in the pain for the one who hurt you so you don't throw the pain back to the other?
And when you get strong enough to say, yeah yeah yeah yeah yes, tentatively, I know it's hard, we then ask the person to give a gift to the one who offended.
Why?
Because that's part of the fullness of a moral virtue.
And what might that goodness be?
A return phone call, a return email, a card, speaking to the person at a gathering, acknowledging the person's humanity, even to others if the person's deceased.
Say something kind about that person to others.
You see, that is widening your own heart, not just widening your mind in the perspective of the other.
You're widening your heart toward the other.
And then we have our fourth and final phase in the next slide, which we call discovery and release from emotional prison.
First of all, try to discover meaning in your suffering.
Do you realize that when you walk this process model, you are becoming more sensitive to the suffering of others?
That you might be able to see suffering hearts that you didn't see before.
Like, when you're perhaps in the, grocery store and everyone's kinda huffing and puffing because the cashier is slow.
By the time you get up there, you realize that person might have been on the feet for four hours and is tired, is having a hard day.
And rather than huffing at the person, you might say, well, thank you for doing this.
I hope you have a good day.
You're aware of the person's suffering.
You're finding meaning in your own suffering by being attuned to the suffering of others.
And so you might discover a new purpose in your life.
I worked with a gentleman in a correctional institution who's never getting out, And he said, you know what I'm doing from now on?
I'm helping my cellmates to forgive.
I know I'm never getting out of here, but I'm gonna ease their burden.
And as you give like this, you end up with the paradox of forgiving, which is the freedom of forgiveness.
As you engage in reaching out to others for their sake, you are the one who is healed.
And we've seen that with the incest survivor study with, Suzanne Friedman and the abused women with Gail Reed all the way down to the men in maximum security prison.
As they gave to those who hurt them, they were the ones who are healed.
So let me know in the next few slides, share with you how you can piece back together your own humanity when you have been disparaged, treated with disrespect, and hurt by other people.
So let's go to the next slide.
How do people restore their own humanity?
And you're not doing it.
You're not really now reconstructing.
It happens to you.
And let's take a look at the next slide.
First of all, forgiveness restores self esteem as you'll see in this next slide.
So if we could turn to that, there let's see.
There we go.
We did a study of people who were abused in the past by others, and these as victims were now addicted to drugs.
And as they forgave those who abused them in the past, they restored their own self esteem.
And we saw that in the incest survivor study.
We saw that in the women who were divorced, who had very difficult marriages and had to leave.
Why do they end up liking themselves?
Because as they end up seeing a wider view of who the other is and start liking the other, you're making room to like yourself better.
And as we see in the next slide, it's not just a feeling that is restored.
So if we here, we can see that there's also an understanding that's restored, that there is a sense of worth as you see in the last word in the title there.
There's a sense of worth that you give to the other, and it comes back around to you.
Hey.
If this other person who hurt me, who really did bad things, truly has a sense of worth as a human being, do you think I too have that kind of worth to stand in the pain for another?
And in my pain, to give goodness to another?
Yes.
I have worth.
So as you forgive and see the worth in the other, your worth is now restored.
And as we see in the next slide, another thing that happens is that trust in others can be rebuilt when it once was shattered.
Remember, the worldview can generalize where you say, no man can be trusted.
No woman can be trusted.
Well, Osterndorff and others, including myself, did a study with people who had very difficult relationships with their parents where the parent was an alcoholic.
And so the these were adult children of alcoholics who were abused in childhood, and they had very difficult relationship problems in adulthood.
They forgave the parent who was the alcoholic.
You know what happened?
These adult children of alcoholics will be able to trust more generally and had better relationships by forgiving their parents.
That's how amazing forgiveness can be.
And in a final slide here of putting your humanity back together, if we turn to the next slide, your sense of identity can be crushed by others who hurt you where you say, I'm not worth very much.
I am a victim, and that is who I am.
Well, no.
Gail Reed and I, when we did that study of women who went through very rocky relationships and marriage and saw themselves as victims, ended up with a entirely different sense of their own identity.
And as one person said to me, and I think it's a great quote because it shows the depth of this getting rid of the victim mentality, and I quote, as I forgave, I went from seeing myself as a victim to a survivor to now a thriver in life.
This is the major construction of the person's own humanity.
And with that in mind, let's turn to the next slide as a summary.
The beauty of forgiveness, when a person chooses without pressure to forgive, it can put back the pieces of a damaged humanity.
The person starts liking the self.
The person begins to say, I too have worth.
The person can begin to trust others so that relationships are stronger.
And shedding the victim mentality gives you a more positive, wholesome identity as to who you are.
And so with that in mind, I now want to switch to a qualitatively different view of forgiveness, the Catholic perspective on forgiving.
If we would please turn to the next slide.
In in his soaring apostolic letter, Salvifici Dolores in 1984, after he was shot and almost killed, Saint Pope John Paul the second talks of redemptive suffering, two really important words for us, everybody.
Redemptive suffering with Jesus Christ when we suffer.
Saint John Paul the second gives us an offer.
As we suffer, we can redemptively suffer with Jesus out of love for him first.
And as we redemptively suffer with Jesus, giving our suffering to Jesus, this changes the meaning of suffering.
As Saint John Paul the second says in Salvifici Dolores, when we suffer with Jesus for the good of humanity, for the good of others, even for our own salvation, suffering now is linked to love.
Did you ever think about that?
If you have pain in your heart now, spiritual pain, emotional pain, or even physical pain in your body, your suffering can be linked to love.
Forgiveness is about suffering.
Therefore, here's the bottom line, everyone.
We can unite our suffering caused by others injustice, unite our suffering with Jesus Christ suffering on his cross when we have been injured by others.
As we do this, as we suffer with Jesus out of love for him, we can offer this suffering for the one who acted unfairly.
You see, we're not just forgiving in isolation.
We're now in the Catholic perspective forgiving with Jesus Christ for the other.
What then is person to person forgiving?
It is first coming to Jesus out of love for him on his cross.
It then is extending the suffering love with Jesus precisely for the one who harmed us.
Did you realize that what this does is it changes the meaning of forgiveness?
It doesn't just change the meaning of suffering.
It changes the meaning of forgiveness, which is now what is forgiveness?
It's an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ for the person of for the purpose of giving a gift to the one who acted badly, which could be praying for the other, praying for the other's salvation.
Do you realize you're uniting with Jesus on the cross with Jesus and praying for the other salvation through your suffering might help bring that person to heaven one day?
Do you realize your forgiving is not for nothing?
It can save a soul?
Did you ever think about that?
Our forgiving toward the redemptive suffering indeed may play a part in this person's salvation.
Let's take a look at the next slide and continue with the Catholic.
As we now are united in suffering love with Jesus for the other person's salvation, we are growing as persons.
How are we doing that?
How are we how are we growing as persons?
Remember, we have free will, don't we?
We're the only creatures on the planet with the free will of becoming more or less of who we have been created to be.
You can become more human or less human without losing your humanity or your essence, But you can grow in your humanity because of the free will God gave you.
Did you ever think about that?
You can literally grow for greater humanness.
What would that what does that mean for a Catholic?
It means we are actually growing more and more in Christ likeness when we forgive if if we unite our pain with Jesus Christ on his cross first out of love for him.
And then through that grace that we get on the cross with him, we shine the light of our pain, of our forgiving onto the one who hurt us, and we then get to grow more and more as the suffering servant.
We grow more in love, which is the essence of our humanity because we are made in the image and likeness of God.
It said it in Genesis one.
And now we know the fullness of that, don't we?
What does it mean to grow in the image and likeness of God?
It means to grow in love.
First John four eight.
It means to grow in suffering love because we now have Jesus Christ on his cross as the one to lead us into what Christianity is all about.
Right?
And as we do that, the meaning of suffering turns to love.
The meaning of forgiveness turns to love.
We become more loving in our identity.
In our very identity, we become more loving persons united, more deeply in love with Jesus Christ for for those who have heard us.
You see the opportunity given to you when others hurt you?
You are given the unbelievable opportunity to grow more in love with Jesus Christ.
I'm not saying go look for injustice, but I'm saying when it happens, you have the golden opportunity of growing more in Christlikeness.
That person is giving you that opportunity, that gift, if you will.
And you know what the gift you are giving that person back?
The opportunity for the possibility of repentance, the possibility of turning the life around, the possibility of salvation, and you playing at least a small part on that salvation because you are redemptively suffering with Jesus on his cross for the one who hurt you.
So with that in mind, let's turn to the next slide.
And I wanna ask you a question in this next one, please.
Can we please turn to the next slide?
No.
Let's see the one before that.
My my apologies.
Yep.
Thank you.
Oh, let's see.
There we go.
Okay.
As, let's see.
Oh, let's see.
There's one before.
There's one after that, isn't there?
Can you turn to one there we go.
Okay.
My apologies on that one.
Okay.
Do we need this kind of perspective of redemptively suffering with Jesus Christ on the cross as the new view of what forgiving is?
And do we need that in the Catholic church today as more and more people seek comfort rather than the invigorating challenge to grow in a moral virtue, especially a moral virtue that includes self sacrificial love.
I think we need a reawakening in the Catholic church with that to wake up people who are a little sleepy these days.
I think we need a thorough examination and practice of genuine Catholic forgiving infused in the mother church today, and we cannot afford to wait.
And I want to plant one seed for you with regard to how to put that into practice right away.
The next time you are at holy mass and the priest is consecrating the host, put your suffering on the altar with the suffering Jesus Christ.
And when he is broken for you and you are broken because of what the other person did to you, unite your suffering with Jesus Christ at the Eucharist.
When you go up to receive the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, pray for the one who hurt you.
Now take in the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ literally inside of you, physically inside of you.
And with Jesus inside of you, be in touch with that pain in your heart caused by the other person.
And through that pain, united with the broken Jesus Christ, who suffered for you and is suffering for the other, by the way, pray for the salvation of the soul of that person who hurt you.
And don't give up on this Eucharistic exercise of forgiving those who have hurt you.
Because over time, this becomes efficacious in your woundedness fading out and love replacing it.
And so now I got one final challenge to do in final slide.
What will be your forgiveness legacy when it's your turn, god willing, to pass to eternal life?
Will you leave more behind on this earth more anger that you you will give to your children's children's children's children?
That if it could be passed down, it could be a hundred years from now, and your anger is still living in the hearts of some of your family members, or will you try to leave the Catholic forgiveness legacy of love united with Jesus Christ now that you can give to others in your family and pass redemptive love to your family members so that gets into their heart.
So that a hundred years from now, some of this forgiving love, redemptive forgiveness love that you started could be alive and well on this earth.
And something of you, which is this love, can be very much alive in your family members being passed on to others.
Do you know one reason why I'm a serious Catholic?
Because of forgiveness as shown to me by the Catholic church.
It's the deepest view of forgiveness I have ever seen, and I'm an egghead professor.
I study everything possible that I can possibly get my hands on.
I've never seen anything deeper than redemptive suffering with Jesus Christ for those who've heard us.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is deep forgiving.
I would like to end here now and entertain questions, clarifications, anything at all from you.
Well, great that you should ask, doctor Anne.
Right?
We actually have several questions that have arrived to us.
And as you have invited us to, jump right in, here we go.
We'll kind of take them in order here.
First question, we live in a cold world.
Is it becoming harder for victims to find nurturing environments that improve the quality of life for those who are suffering?
It seems that more people are isolating themselves in order to avoid conflicts.
Yes.
I do think the world is becoming colder.
Just look at the political divide Have those of whose of us who've been around a while seen such divide?
That seems very, very real.
And we need environments, you're right, that can help nurture forgiveness and help all in that community advance consciously and deliberately in the moral virtue of forgiveness.
That is why part one thing that's really deep in my heart is to see churches that choose to do so become forgiving communities.
Right?
And you can deliberately make churches forgiving communities where you deliberately use that term, forgiving community, have quotations on forgiveness from the Bible, from, church tradition, from, just different authors in the church bulletin once or twice a month or every week if you wish.
You can have speakers come in a couple of times a year.
You can have people in a book club, and it doesn't even have to be physically present, although that helps with the community.
But you could meet even by Zoom like we are doing here occasionally and talk about a book on forgiveness, and there are many.
And the church as forgiving community could be a very qualitatively fascinating development that I've never seen done, and it's near and dear to my heart.
And what about the family as forgiving community where we deliberately use those words?
Our family is a forgiving community where you talk about forgiveness deliberately and use teachable moments, such as you're watching something on television and there's a conflict there.
You can ask, how might they have solved this differently had they forgiven one another?
Right?
Or around the dinner table, you can say without you know, you could only have to share everything as an adult with children.
Well, I had a little bit of a bad day at work.
And you talk about how you had to forgive someone who themselves was having a bad day.
You're planting a seed that forgiveness is important.
Three things, the forgiving community, the forgiving community, and the forgiving community.
We absolutely need to use those terms and get them done, and it's very heavy on my heart that it happened.
Thank you for that question.
Thank you.
This question you may have answered sufficiently.
I'll read it, and you you can tell us.
Do you believe healing can occur in the victim completely on their own without facilitation or contact with those who have made them suffer?
In isolation, can a victim's self esteem ever be restored?
Actually, when people are hurt very, very gravely, oftentimes, they do not heal in relationship to the other person.
Let's take a look at abandonment of a marital relationship.
The other person now is in Arizona, and you're in Washington, DC, and the person has cut off all communication with you, ghosted you.
You do not have to have that person to forgive.
Let's take a look, and we don't know for sure the heart of the father of the prodigal son.
We don't know that because the Bible doesn't tell us.
But remember, the prodigal son's father ran to the prodigal son, embraced the prodigal son before the prodigal son said anything.
The prodigal son might have been coming home to get his laundry done.
The prodigal son might have been coming home to get more money.
I'm guessing that the father had done forgiving in his heart with the son gone in another land where he was so destitute he had to work on a pig farm, which was not a good thing for a Hebrew boy to do.
And I'm guessing that the father was doing that in his heart prior to meeting the son.
Even if he had never met the son again, what can he do?
He can get rid of the resentment in his heart that the son might have put there.
He could be saying good things to the elder son, who, by the way, got bent out of shape when the fatted calf was slaughtered, saying, what about me?
Well, that's another story.
And so the the father probably was going to accomplish all of this without this on there.
Abandoned people can forgive without the other being there.
Does it help if the other comes repentantly and with remorse and says, I am sorry?
Of course.
But remember, this is offering goodness that can be offered, like saying having a mass said for the person or, saying kind things about the person to other family members.
There are ways to be good to people without face to face, and that's what I like about forgiveness.
Otherwise, think about it.
If you cannot forgive well unless the person comes to you, you are literally trapped in your unforgiveness until this other person decides to cooperate and be reasonable.
That is not reasonable.
And so what I like about forgiveness is it opens up the possibility of you restoring your own humanity even if the person continues to reject you.
And that's what I would call part of the beauty of forgiveness that you can heal, become a whole person even if the other person is trying to bring you down and trying to compromise your humanity.
Thank you.
Next question.
Do you think there is a danger in treating symptoms before the root cause?
Considering the studies you mentioned, you could have done a standard treatment to lower their depression without having achieved forgiveness?
Okay.
That's a great question.
What when we started, Suzanne Friedman and I, when we started that study on incest survivors, the published literature said this.
If you are working in a clinical context with incest survivors, do not expect much change from them in terms of their emotional and psychological well-being.
The literature actually said it's unethical to have incest survivors come into therapy with an expectation of much change because we don't have powerful enough approaches for this to actually happen.
So if we waited and tried to work with the incest survivors on ameliorating depression, it literally would not have happened.
And I actually have scientific proof on that.
You know what that is?
The control group.
The control group was engaging in therapy as best they could away from us for fourteen months.
At the end of that time, how was their depression?
They were still clinically depressed.
It's not that they just had some depression.
They had enough depression that a licensed psychologist such as myself, looking at their protocol of depression, would be concerned about them as a person.
They had made no progress.
Then they started the forgiveness program, and they went down in two nonclinical levels.
So, actually, we have to change our thinking, in my humble opinion, in the mental health profession, and realize we need forgiveness as a pathway to start the healing process of these stubbornly entrenched mental health challenges such as depression, such as heightened anxiety, and hopelessness, which is a big deal these days.
A lot of people are walking around with hopelessness in their hearts, and it is in the forgiving that all of that is restored.
Wow.
Thank you.
Another strong question.
Are there any studies for victims of clergy sexual abuse benefiting from forgiveness or is this an area without much research yet?
I could be, remiss in my scholarly knowledge, but I don't know of any.
I don't think there is a study that has actually been done for victims who choose, some would not, but who choose to forgive in this situation.
Ask me if I'd like to get this study done.
We have over 400 people tuned into this talk.
Anyone out there wanna do that research with me?
Twist my arm.
I totally would like to get this done.
Why?
Because it's so deeply important.
And, again, keep this in mind, however.
Forgiveness is controversial.
If you and I started this, people would howl, and they'd say, how dare you demand that people forgive?
And the response to that is, we're not demanding.
We're not pressuring.
We're not even suggesting that we're making it available.
And if those who wish to, who choose to walk that path, we are here with what let me use a buzzword here.
Empirically verified treatment called forgiveness, which you won't be excusing.
You see, that's where people will howl when they misunderstand what forgiveness is.
The how dare you comes in when they think we are minimizing the evil of this kind of sexual abuse.
No.
It will remain unjust.
It it was unjust, is unjust, and will always be unjust.
But for those who would like to do this, I would imagine they could have remarkable healing.
And even if they have come up with a negative view of the church, which is a philosophical error of reductionism, of reducing the church to less than it is because of a person.
So we're taking a person's action and generalizing it to the whole church and reducing the church as to what the church actually is, I would bet you here's a hypothesis I would have if we can do the study, that a person's view of the church would widen again to be more truthful, that the church also is standing against this and calling it what it is, which is evil.
And it's not the church's fault.
It's a fallen person's fault, and that should not lead to the disparagement of the church universal.
And so if people want to do this, they're not excusing, but those of you who want to do this with me would need the moral virtue of courage.
You know why?
You're gonna be yelled at for even suggesting this, all the more reason why we have to do it.
Fair.
Thank you.
Here's an interesting question.
If the benefits of forgiveness are so strong, should I forgive primarily to help others or to help myself?
There are many reasons why we forgive, and there's no one reason where you should feel ashamed of it or say, well, I can't have other reasons.
Oftentimes, when people come into forgiveness therapy, they come in for the reason that they are drowning in an emotional, psychological sense.
That's not dishonorable.
They are coming in for self healing.
Think about an analogy.
If you are a nonswimmer in a stormy lake and I throw you a life preserver, you're gonna take it because you need it to save your life.
Well, if you need to enter forgiveness therapy for yourself to recapture humanity so you can be kind to your family members, you can get the job done at work, that's very honorable.
But there's also more to the reasons other than reductionism again.
It's like, well, I have that one reason.
That's the only reason I have and the only reason I need.
No.
Listen to all the other reasons that there can be for forgiving.
First, for myself to heal.
Second, to help the other to heal because the person obviously needs healing who's dumping the truck on me, possibly for a renewed relationship, if that's possible.
Another is forgiveness as an end in and of itself because to exercise any moral virtue is good.
And so regardless of the consequences, regardless if I heal, if the other heals, or if we get back together, it is good to practice forgiveness in and of itself.
You wanna hear another reason?
To unite with Jesus Christ in redemptive suffering for the other salvation so that I get a more intimate relationship with Jesus Christ and through that to help save that other person's soul.
Look how far we've come from.
I want this for myself because I'm drowning in the lake.
Do I want intimacy with Jesus Christ for the other salvation?
I just gave you five reasons.
Everyone are the illegitimate.
Does everyone get to that highest level?
No.
Because we don't talk about forgiveness even in Catholicism on that highest level, and it breaks my heart.
We need to show people that endpoint so that they can choose if they wish that reason for themselves.
But if they don't see it because we don't talk about it, they'll miss it.
I don't want people to miss that highest level.
Mhmm.
Thank you.
So, next question.
If we're unable to express our feelings of anger, sadness, or resentment towards the person who wronged us, how would you suggest we forgive from our hearts?
How how does that part work?
Okay.
What we can do is give up the resentment without putting it on a platter to the other and say, see.
Because we were gonna have to be careful with that because you could be even intemperate.
That's a vice of temperance, according to platonic tradition, of course.
And so you have to be careful that you don't lord it over the other if you went to the person said, look how much anger I've gotten rid of, and look how much anger you've caused me.
You can get rid of the anger silently and express that in goodness verbally toward others or toward the other person.
And you definitely do not have to go to the other to talk about the amelioration of the anger at all.
Because, remember, there's three levels to the definition of forgiveness.
You've been treated unjustly.
You get rid of deliberately, consciously, willfully that anger, but then you give the goodness.
How about focusing only on the goodness?
And if you can't be with the person, as I've said several times in this talk, you can express that goodness to others on behalf of that other person toward the other, but indirectly toward others.
And, again, you can pray for the other salvation.
You can talk with God about this person and saving this person without ever saying another word to this person if you cannot.
But let's not get in temperate either.
I don't want people walking away from this lecture and say, I'm glad I came because now I can get rid of that louse.
Now I can never have to talk with that person because that egghead in right said I don't have to.
Well, no.
No.
What you do when you forgive is you extend your hand to the other to say, come out out of the come up out of the pit.
Come up higher.
The other sometimes spits on your hand or wants to bite your hand, in which case you cannot keep extending the hand.
But when you forgive, you make that available, then the uniting back together is the other person's call.
So you can extend that hand if the other lets you.
What if the other person abandoned you and that was in Arizona when you're in Washington DC?
You can't literally extend that hand physically, but you could through a letter or an email, for example, or a third party or whatever.
But it's up to the other to take that hand because think of what you're doing.
You are offering the beauty of giving something to the other who wasn't giving to you.
You're giving the person a chance at a second chance, at a redemption of a relationship, and even more deeply with Jesus Christ, the redemption of a soul.
But it doesn't have to happen because the other doesn't necessarily accept it.
Okay.
Next question.
Thank you.
You're thank you for the rapid picking up of questions.
It's very helpful.
This is kind of two related questions.
I wonder how forgiveness works when one is in the midst of trauma.
And and kind of connected to that, when does forgiveness become enabling, especially if when the negative treatment continues after the forgiveness and reconciliation process?
Right.
Okay.
When you're in the midst of the trauma, I get that question all the time.
Here's an example.
A woman will come to me and say, you know, my husband does verbal subtle diggings at me every single day.
I get 10 of them a day, and it's built up.
The tenth one was hard.
The two hundredth is even harder.
Should I just simply not forgive?
My answer is, it's your choice.
But if you like forgiveness, if you understand it truly, then it's even more important in the midst of trauma that you forgive to protect your own heart from the effects of that trauma.
Because those effects can keep building up to where you are brought down and your humanity is broken up, your self esteem, your sense of worth, your sense of trust, your own identity as to who you are as a person.
Your continuing to forgive is harder, but it makes it all the more important because your humanity is at risk.
So if you like forgiveness, you understand it properly, You know what it is.
Go for it.
Enabling only will occur if you don't understand that forgiveness and justice exist side by side.
If you're thinking in an either or way, now that I'm forgiving, I am letting the person have that person's way.
No.
When you forgive, you do not let the person have that person's way.
That is not letting justice have free reign together with forgiveness.
Those two must grow up together or one or the other can be distorted.
How do you distort forgiveness when you abandon justice?
Enabling.
Because then you are basically saying, I'm giving the message that all is okay.
That's not the message when you forgive.
The forgiveness is, I am loving you through my pain, but I'm not gonna necessarily interact with you if you keep giving me pain.
That's a justice issue.
Okay?
So the intemperance when you forgive without justice is enabling.
How about justice without forgiveness?
You know what that can deal with?
When we get down to the peace table, even husband and wife, for example, at the kitchen table, you might demand far more than you should be because you want the pound of flesh as happened with Shylock and the Merchant of Venice from Shakespeare.
Right?
In other words, call it justice, but what you really want is revenge.
And without the gentleness and the softened heart of forgiveness, your quest for justice can spill over to the intemperance of revenge.
That's why we need both.
Perfect.
Thank you.
Okay.
Next next question.
We're we're nearing the end of the list, which is about right with our timing.
Can you tell us a little bit about training on the process of implementing forgiveness therapy?
Is the process model of forgiveness, for example, outlined, in detail in in in the book, Forgiveness is a Choice that that you published?
And do you have any additional book recommendations?
Okay.
Yes.
Forgiveness is a choice was my first self help book on forgiving for the general public, and it works people through the process model.
I then have a book, which actually is deeper than forgiveness is a choice called the forgiving life.
It's also published by the American Psychological Association, and it's a Socratic dialogue between two women, Sophia and Inez.
Sophia is the word meaning wisdom, and she's the therapist.
And Inez means purity.
And it they go through the process model through dialogue.
But this more deep than forgiveness is a choice because I link forgiving very expressly in the early chapters to love.
And I'm it's really interesting.
It's a secular book with the American Psychological Association, but forgiving in that book is linked to agape love.
And then the third one published by the Norton Publishing House in New York is called eight keys to forgiveness.
It's a series called eight keys to this and that.
So when they asked me, I called them up and said, eight keys to forgiveness.
There are more than eight keys.
There are more like 20.
Can I write a book called 20 keys to forgiveness?
They said, sit down there, buddy.
It's called the eight keys, kind of a program here.
So, okay, eight keys.
So I so I wrote an eight keys to forgiveness book.
And that also works people through the process, but a little differently.
We jump around a little bit more there.
But, again, it's a self help book.
We also have the book forgiveness therapy published by the APA, and we have a course on that for therapists, at the International Forgiveness Institute, which is a nonprofit organization we started quarter of a century ago.
It's internationalforgiveness.com.
And then, the APA has actually published two videos, training sessions for clinicians.
The first one is led by my colleague, doctor Richard Fitzgibbons, who actually works with a client on that video.
And then I work with the client, Beth, in the second video.
And these are real sessions where we first met these clients for the first time, and then they said, okay.
Camera's rolling.
And then APA asked the impossible of us, which was to show movement in forgiveness in one session.
As one takes time to build up client rapport, client therapist rapport in at least four sessions, they asked us to not only start the rapport, but to show movement and forgiveness in forty five minutes, which by the grace of god happened in both of them.
Well, I don't you know, thank you, heavenly father.
Otherwise, it wouldn't have happened.
So we have all these materials, three self help books, a book for the, mental health professional forgiveness therapy, and two training videos and then, of course, at the International Forgiveness Institute.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Here's, here's kind of a final question.
This is a little bit of a negative context, but also, I think, an opportunity to really speak into the importance that you've outlined earlier.
Why do we see so much lack of forgiveness among people of faith, families of faith, religious communities, local churches?
I think we don't see enough of forgiveness in churches or families, quite frankly, because we don't make it consciously and deliberately a part of the norms of human interaction.
Forgiveness has not risen to and I talk about person to person forgiveness.
Of course, god, the human forgiveness in the Catholic confessional has been there, thank god, for a long time.
But person to person forgiveness has not had the ascendancy that it should have.
A friend of mine, Monsignor John Hebel said to me, you know, at different times in the history of the church, different aspects of really important issues of the church have risen.
And he says, I think he said this to me probably twenty years ago.
I think that time for person to person forgiveness is ascending.
And if that's the case, what you we have to do is create a norm in families and churches that person to person forgiving is worthwhile and should be become part of who we are.
We can change norms.
Look at the norm of changing cigarette smoking.
When you look at movies in the forties, everyone had a cigarette.
Okay?
Then there was a lot of advertising.
And what happened was now at the University of Wisconsin Madison, you literally can't smoke in buildings.
Those who I don't smoke, but for those who do, they have to bear minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit in January to go out and and deal with their addiction.
But what's happened is the norm of nonsmoking shifted and actually happened.
That's just one example of what can happen in societies.
Ask me if I would like to see a norm of forgiving as important in families and churches.
That's the idea of the forgiving community.
So we're going full circle with what we started in the questions.
We need to create a norm by sermons on forgiving, little bulletin inserts, speakers.
I volunteer.
Okay.
I'll I'll volunteer to do one or two.
Okay?
No problem.
We need to keep the ID in front of people so that it's a norm, and we don't fall into the, really, error of what Blaise Pascal called diversion.
Because it could be the case that people will get all excited about it, and it'll fade in a year.
We need the moral virtue of perseverance.
You start planting forgiveness as a norm within Catholic churches and within families, and my heart is very heavy in that happening sooner rather than later.
Thank you.
I wanna thank you, doctor Enright, so much for this, wonderful and compelling presentation this evening, for sharing this with our community.
Thank you so very much.
It's been my honor to be with Divine Mercy University.
You are a great institution, and I admire you.
So thank you.
Thank you very much.
Our next Newman lecture will be doctor Vitz, on Thursday, April 20.
And you can see it's a great and compelling topic.
Psychology and visual art, modernist painting and postmodern art and the recovery of beauty.
Please tell all your friends about this, and please join us, on that evening.
And one final note, many of you have asked, where can we find this lecture, after this evening?
And the answer is, within a couple of weeks at the most, it will be uploaded to Divine Mercy University's YouTube channel.
You will be able to watch it again there and share it with your friends there.
Please do that.
Please help spread the word about this really, really important topic.
Thank you all very much.
Good night.