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I thought this was an interesting article on apologies. Particularly since some of us feel apologies help, others don’t and we wonder if the church feels it’s important to apologize: [url]http://bycommonconsent.com/2015/02/02/ … apologies/”>
http://bycommonconsent.com/2015/02/02/some-thoughts-on-apologies/[/url] I like the perspective, thanks for sharing. The author seems oddly familiar. One commenter said that a new bishop need not apologize for a previous bishop and a new church president need not apologize for a previous church president. To this I would say
1) Yes, Hopefully the person that caused the problem is able to apologize.
2) Does this thinking apply to CEO’s and presidents of nations?
I do not think it wise for an incoming CEO or US president to apologize for all the missteps of their predecessors. “I am sorry stockholders that this organization under former CEO failed to innovate and tanked the stock price.” “I am sorry America that President Bush seemed to be in the pocket of big business and aggressively supported caps on damages to be paid in tort claims.” Nor do I want my officials to spend all of their time apologizing.
And yet there are things that are appropriate to apologize for. I am thinking of things like slavery, Japanese internment, treatment of Native Americans generally, etc. What about the leaders of other churches? Should anyone in the Catholic Church ever have apologized for the sexual abuse scandal?
As a church it seems that we have almost apologized for the priesthood ban with the new essay – or at least combatting non-doctrinal teachings – which is good too.
We have also almost apologized for MMM.
I personally think it would be too soon to apologize to gay people for hurtful comments made in the past. We continue to offer them nothing but lifelong celibacy. It would be difficult to say we are sorry for some hateful comments that were made in the past. “What we should have said was that your orientation is not sinful – it is the acting in accordance with your orientation in forming a committed same sex relationship that offends God.” That doesn’t sound helpful.
For me I do not think that organizations need to repent in the same way that people do. But I do think that they need to be managed. Part of that management is for the leadership to issue appropriate apologies now and then for obvious and clear wrongdoing of the organization in times past.
IN business, to me, apologies without money attached (when there has been financial hardship caused) are not apologies. The problem is that people take advantage of apologies, and in many cases, organizations that would like to apologize don’t for fear of lawsuits, trolls and other abuses of the legal system. OTOH, apologies can signal to insiders what is accepted in the organization, particularly to lower level bureaucrats what institutional problems need to be corrected.
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