Word: pardon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Nixon has not forgiven himself," observes Maryknoll Priest-Psychologist Eugene Kennedy. "He has not admitted that he is capable of evil, that he has hurt countless persons. Forgiveness is a tough existential transition." Divine forgiveness is the model for human pardon, notes Church Historian Martin Marty, a Lutheran, and involves "an annihilation of what the sinner was. God completely wipes the slate clean. But that only happens if there is repentance, an about-face, a 180° turn. There is no evidence that the former President is doing anything of the kind." Nixon's attitude, complains Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, president...
...just such forlorn human beings whom Abraham Lincoln, the greatest of presidential pardoners, could not resist. Lincoln believed in a stern divine justice, yet time and again during the Civil War he exasperated his generals by pardoning boys who faced execution for such capital crimes as sleeping on sentry duty or even desertion. But Lincoln's pardons were often just commutations of death sentences, not passports to complete freedom; offenders could still find themselves at hard labor on the dread Dry Tortugas. Ford's pardon of Nixon may stem from similar motives of compassion, but it is hardly the same...
...major body of Christian teaching favors forgiveness without some concern for justice. For churchmen, as for other Americans, one of the most galling aspects of Ford's decision is that it suggests unequal justice. Ethicist Roger L. Shinn, acting president of Manhattan's Union Theological Seminary, feels that the pardon reinforces American cynicism about equality before the law. "What bothers so many is that the demand for justice and punishment applies to the poor and the weak, and mercy applies to the powerful." Jesus, however,stressed that the more powerful a person is, the more accountable he is for wrongdoing...
...Ford's pardon of Nixon has now kindled the Standard and Times, as it has other religious commentators, to call unconditional amnesty for selective conscientious objectors "a necessity." There is, of course, a subtle difference between pardon and amnesty. A pardon usually presumes some guilt; amnesty, derived from the same Greek word as amnesia, "forgets" the alleged offense without necessarily imputing guilt. Yet because Nixon hedges on his guilt, pardoning him is more an act of amnesty than of genuine pardon. If Ford so desired, it could be a prelude to full amnesty for the Viet Nam War resisters...
Perhaps one of the deepest difficulties of Ford's pardon is a confusion of two roles: his obligations as a Christian and his responsibilities as a just President. On the personal level, the quest for Christian perfection obliges one human being to forgive another not only without regard to contrition but in spite of continuing hatred. Jesus' injunction in the Sermon on the Mount to "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you" carries no conditions. But an official charged with the administration of justice cannot casually apply personal obligations to a public...