I Am Sorry..

Here are ten instances, arranged chronologically, that I remember when the “I am sorry” was used (and – at some instance[s] — abused).

1. Bill Clinton’s Lewinsky Affairs

He was caught with his pants down – literally. Bill Clinton made his last-ditch personal apology on December 11, 1998 to the members of the Congress and the American people. He said: “What I want the American people to know, what I want the Congress to know, is that I am profoundly sorry for all I have done wrong in words and deeds. I never should have misled the country, the Congress, my friends and my family. Quite simply, I gave in to my shame… Mere words cannot fully express the profound remorse I feel for what our country is going through, and for what members of both parties in Congress are now faced to deal with… These past months have been a tortuous process of coming to terms with what I did. I understand that accountability demands consequences, and I’m prepared to accept them. Painful though the condemnation of the Congress would be, it would pale in comparison to the consequences of the pain I have caused my family. There is no greater agony.”

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The next day, Bill Clinton was impeached by the House.

2. The Sins of the Holy

Nope, it’s not his personal sins – which of course he had. Among the other things that would be remembered of John Paul II as a leader of the Roman Catholic Church were his apologies for the sins of his Church.

During his reign as Pope, he said sorry for the conquest of Mesoamerica by Spain in the name of the Church; the legal process on the Italian scientist and philosopher Galileo Galilei himself a devout Catholic; the Catholic’s involvement with the African slave trade; the Church hierarchy’s role in burning at the stake and the religious wars that followed the Protestant Reformation; the injustices committed against women, the violation of women’s rights and for the historical denigration of women; the inactivity and silence of many Catholics during the Holocaust; the execution of Jan Hus; for the sins of the Crusader attack on Constantinople; and for the Church disrespect of the rights of ethnic groups and peoples, and (for showing) contempt for their cultures and religious traditions.

The Pope was reported to have said: “An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.”

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