Many years ago, I was talking with a prominent conservative journalist, and was taken aback when he suddenly sneered about what he called “the cult of forgiveness.” He was a Christian believer, and a public moralizer; so his scorn was not motivated by secular distaste for religious language. No, it was based precisely in that concern for justice that is the stock in trade of most intellectuals, left or right, secular or religious.

That forgiveness is both the central idea of Christianity, and an assault on the conventional human understanding of justice, comes through with great clarity in Fr. R. Scott Hurd’s short, lucid new book, Forgiveness: A Catholic Approach. Father Hurd stresses that forgiveness isn’t “fair” — it involves not giving people what they deserve, which is what human justice is all about — but that it is nonetheless essential to spiritual growth and health: It represents a growing into the attitude of Divine Mercy, the plan God has for human beings. “We can hope,” Hurd writes, “that our final end, and the final end of the one who hurt us, will be one and the same. That’s what Jesus wants, and so should we.”

The book makes for very easy reading; it’s the task it outlines that is supremely difficult. This is a very encouraging how-to book about living a life of forgiveness, and it’s not just for Catholics. (Father Hurd is an ex-Episcopalian, and dedicates the book to his wife, with an ever-so-slightly misquoted line from the Beach Boys’ song “God Only Knows.” The book is winsome, even before you get to page 1.)