The
latest apology by Pope Francis reminded me of the long tradition of the Catholic cult spreading blame for things they did onto others
: “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” he said.
Nope. Not our fault,
your fault.
I am sorry. I ask for forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the church and of religious communities cooperated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction blah blah... etc.
It's a reasonable apology that takes some of the credit but "religious communities" will not be pleased to hear the Pope bringing them into whatever this one's about.
Next up is Benedict who wrote a letter about sexual abuse of children:
"All the greater is my pain for the abuses and the errors that occurred in those different places during the time of my mandate", accompanied by a three-page legal addendum. "
I have come to understand that we ourselves are drawn into this grievous fault whenever we neglect it or fail to confront it with the necessary decisiveness and responsibility", “
Quite soon, I shall find myself before the final judge of my life”. Hear his pain.
For the next one, I'll just leave this here:
List of apologies made by Pope John Paul II
As a sampler: "
Women's dignity has often been unacknowledged and their prerogatives misrepresented; they have often been relegated to the margins of society and even reduced to servitude...Certainly it is no easy task to assign the blame for this". Certainly we would not want to assign the incorrect amount of blame.
"
If objective blame, especially in particular historical contexts, has belonged to not just a few members of the Church, for this I am truly sorry."
As if! But he admits the possibility of a few bad applies, and graciously takes responsibility for them (although it was nothing to do with him).
Pope John Paul I did not apparently feel inclined to apologize for much but he made a terrible muddle of birth control that the Supreme Court is only just beginning to remedy:
"
I must confess that I hoped in my heart, even though I didn't let it out in writing, that the very serious difficulties could be overcome and that the reply of the Teacher, who speaks with a special charism and in the name of the Lord, might coincide with the hopes raised in so many couples, especially after the establishment of a special pontifical commission to examine the issue."
Do Catholics actually know what he's talking about?
Then there was World War 2: "
In a long-awaited document on the church's role in the Holocaust, the Vatican defended Pope Pius XII, who headed the church during the war, from accusations that he turned a blind eye to the systematic killing of Jews."
"
We cannot know how many Christians in countries occupied or ruled by the Nazi powers or their allies were horrified at the disappearance of their Jewish neighbors and yet were not strong enough to raise their voices in protest."
Truly we cannot - it could be none for all we know, or one or two bad apples again.
Ah Catholics... but at least they're not Jews, right?
Their typically ungracious response:
"It falls quite short of what was hoped for," said Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem.
Anyway, there are more examples. These were just a few off the top of my head that occurred after reading about Pope Francis' trip to Canada.