I’m a Bedardist. My order knows more about the ways in which the human mind and the human spirit can hurt themselves than most of us wish we’d ever had to learn. There’s no question that we can convince ourselves of literally anything we wish to believe, and there’s also no question that we can be far more ruthless – far more cruel – in punishing ourselves than any other reasonable person would ever be. We can – and we will, my son, trust me in this – find innumerable ways in which to doubt and question and indict ourselves for things only we know about, supposed crimes only we realize were ever committed. There are times when that truly is a form of justice, but far more often it’s a case of punishing the innocent. Or, at the very least, of punishing our own real or imagined misdeeds far more severely than we would ever punish anyone else for the same offence.