2 Conflicting articles I found on Catholic Answers

[Pipiriki]

Im not sure who to send this to or notify but I went searching for answers on forgiving someone who raped me, who has not repented etc and how I was to move on appropriately in the right way and heal.

This following article I found gave me the answers I needed, especially of Preemptive Forgiveness. Essentially No, I dont have to forgive someone who has never repented.
(read full article to get whole understanding)
Catholic Answers - Limits on Forgiveness by Jimmy Akin

All is well until I go and read this article…
Catholic Answers - Should I Forgive Someone Who Hasn’t Repented - Tom Nash
which goes onto say Yes, I must.

Both have used the same scripture - “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you;but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14-15).
But…
Akin goes onto say the following…
Consider Luke 17:3–4, where Jesus tells us, “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him; and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
Notice that Jesus says to forgive him if he repents, not regardless of whether he does so. Jesus also envisions the person coming back to you and admitting his wrong.
The upshot? If someone isn’t repentant, you don’t have to forgive him.

Hmmmmm…

Conflicting advice Catholic Answers. Needs fixing for the likes of me and others looking for answers to move forward and heal God’s way only.
Thanks
PS: Quite a pain not to be able to add the actual links to articles in this feedback.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Hi there, welcome to the forums.

Just so you know, this forum doesn’t have actual Catholic Answers apologists on it any more as far as I know. CA maintains the forum site, but all of us on here are just a bunch of random Internet people having discussions and trying to answer the questions of people who come by.

Also, this “Site Feedback” subforum is for mostly technical and admin stuff going on with the CA forum, such as “How do I use the Ignore function?” and “The banner ad is making the page load slowly” and “Why are threads locking early?” It’s not about “I have an issue with an apologetics column in some other part of the CA website.”

We can certainly discuss your purported conflict between the two articles, although someone should probably move the thread out of Site Feedback and into Apologetics, but nobody affiliated with CA or the website content is likely to get your message here, so if your point was to tell the CA management that they have an apparent conflict on their website, you need to contact them in some way other than this forum.

 

[StephieNorthCo]

The main Catholic Answers has a contact form you might use to get clarification. It’s in the “about us” section.

 

[goout]

Jimmy Akin is always rock solid and I found his blog post on this odd.

It’s difficult to avoid the imperative to forgive without condition, and this issue usually arises when forgiveness is confused with a type of acquiescence to evil.
They are not the same thing.
Or it is assumed that forgiveness releases a person from remembering the pain and offense. It does not necessarily.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Catholic Answers - Limits on Forgiveness by Jimmy Akin

Mr Akin’s article is far more nuanced than “Nope, you don’t have to forgive other people”.

From this article:

Just to make sure we get the point, Jesus singles this petition out for special commentary: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14–15).

So that’s it. You have to forgive if you want to be forgiven.

At the end of the article:

And what if a person doesn’t repent when all is said and done?

At some point we need to let our feeling of anger fade, not for his sake but for ours. It isn’t good for us to stay angry, and it poses temptations to sin. Ultimately, we have to let go of the feeling of anger and move on with life. Frequently we have to do so even when a person has not repented.