Pope Francis’s beautiful take on sins: ‘We don’t have the right to not forget’: His comments on forgetting the sins of others is harder — in both directions. On the one hand, it accepts — as Catholic teaching continues to accept — the idea that a consensual gay tryst is a sin. Pope Francis’s more tolerant regime has its limits.
But on the other, it sets a bar for mercy that few of us reach. We live in an age where your neighbor’s past indiscretions are only a Google search away — and they’re only a Google search away forever. Washington is particularly obsessed with digging up decades-old indiscretions and embarrassment in order to humiliate people running for office or serving in government.