Cardinal Francis George once famously commented that we live in a culture where “everything is permitted, and nothing is forgiven.” Bishop Robert Barron writes that in the typical Georgean manner, the saying is pithy, memorable, and dead right. Even the most casual survey of our society discloses the truth of the first part of the Cardinal’s adage. Men are allowed to be women, and women men. Male athletes, claiming a female identity, can dominate women’s sports. Transgender surgery, even when it amounts to the mutilation of children, is positively encouraged in many parts of our country, including my home state of Minnesota. Abortion, even to the moment of birth, is legal (indeed celebrated) in a number of states; assisted suicide of the suffering is considered a fundamental right of the individual and a prerogative of the state. But the truth of the second part of the Cardinal’s statement is equally obvious. Violations of the accepted secular orthodoxy today result in cancellation, elimination, and permanent ostracization. If you doubt me, try posting something even mildly anti-woke on the internet. The Jacobin mob will be on you in moments. And if you read the ideologues behind wokeism, you will see that being, say, a white male or an advocate of traditional religious values makes you permanently a reprobate with no hope of redemption. If you doubt me on this score, ask any woke enthusiast just how much apology or reparation is required to relieve an offender of his guilt. You will find that the answer is “never enough.” So, on the one hand, everything seems to be permitted, but on the other hand, nothing is ever really forgiven. What brought the Lord Jesus Christ to the cross was a demonic farrago of hatred, stupidity, violence, cruelty, institutional injustice, self-serving careerism, betrayal, denial, and gross indifference to the will of God. Though many of those responsible for the death of Jesus wrapped themselves in the mantle of righteousness or offered pathetic justifications for their behavior, all of them were exposed as frauds and sinners. The cross itself served as a judgment on human folly and wickedness. In its light, there was no chance to hide. But in the Gospel story, the man who had been hurt as thoroughly as a person can be hurt returned that action by providing forgiving love. Every sin is forgivable, and the ineffable God cancels no one.