Sorry

A trend that has gone too far? Gordon Beauchamp thinks so:

We live amid a veritable tsunami of apology. The Catholic Church, which, of course, has much to apologize for, has, of late, offered _mea culpas_ to Galileo, the Jews, the gypsies, Jan Hus, whom it burned at the stake in 1415, even to Constantinople (now Istanbul) for its sacking 800 years ago by the knights of the Fourth Crusade, an event for which the late John Paul II expressed “deep regret.” No wonder that a group in England, claiming descent from the medieval Knights Templars, is asking the Vatican to apologize for the violent suppression of the order and for torturing to death its Grand Master Jacques de Molay in 1314, an apology timed to commemorate the 700th anniversary of that fell deed. In America, the National Council of Churches apologized to Native Americans for Europeans’ discovering their continent and appropriating their land (but did not return any church’s specific holdings to any specific tribe). The United Church of Canada followed suit, officially apologizing to Canada’s native peoples for wrongs inflicted by the church; the native peoples, however, officially rejected the apology...

Facing history that Gorgon’s head dead on is never easy, and at times it is almost unbearable. The clearest lesson that it teaches is that grim one: _Homo homini lupus_. Still it chastens, tempers, rigorously instructs, is essential. The more we know of it, the better.

But, please. No more apologies.

(Thanks to 3QuarksDaily and Aaron.)