For more on this see Coenhoven’s excellent article on forgiveness. This is from the introductory essay of a special issue on the subject:

attempts to strip forgiveness-talk of cultic particularity have obscured the ways in which the purportedly secular talk of forgiveness that plays a significant role in our culture remains indebted to Christian thought.

As an example of an interesting admixture of both trends at once, consider the briefly popular recent news story about Lucy Mangum, a six-year-old girl who, after undergoing surgery to repair a leg severely bitten by a blacktip shark, told reporters that she forgave the shark because she believed it had not meant to harm her (Fox News 2011). I do not mean to chide Lucy for applying the idea of forgiveness to a creature that lacks the agential credentials I consider necessary for forgiveness; she is a guide. The “folk” concept of forgiveness on which she drew involves the idea that forgiving is not being angry at, or visiting retribution on, something that has caused you trouble. This approach does not tie forgiveness to repentance; indeed, Lucy rightly perceived that forgiveness is now commonly justified on the basis that the perpetrator is not really to blame.

It seems to me that this way of thinking—popularized in best-selling books that tout the benefits of forgiving everything from God to the weather—drains the idea of forgiveness of its significance, undermines the sense of meaning and inspiration the term still widely stirs, and avoids the profound questions about grace in the midst of fault that it has traditionally evoked. If this is all that one means by forgiveness we might as well use less freighted terms, such as “overlooking” or “getting over it,” which would seem to serve just as well.

(source: The Possibilities of Forgiveness)