Is Saying ‘I’m Sorry’ Always Enough?
My husband and I recently celebrated our 17th anniversary, marking easily the most wonderful 17 years of my life. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that the most important words in a marriage aren’t “I love you,” significant as those words are. The words that often matter most are, “I’m sorry.”
Being able to acknowledge my own mistakes and express regret never fails to diffuse a tense situation. Hearing an apology from my husband after we’ve disagreed is like pouring a cooling ointment on raw skin. It heals.
But is saying the words always enough? Don’t we also need to shore our apology with good faith actions that demonstrate true remorse? Something that can drain the life out of a relationship is to keep picking the same fights and engaging in the same hurtful behavior. In that case, repeated apologies don’t cause much repair. Instead, it’s death of the relationship by a thousand cuts.
A story of sorrow and remorse unfolded on the world stage last week when Pope Francis traveled to Canada. He apologized to First Nations peoples for egregious acts they suffered at residential Catholic schools. Thousands of indigenous children were taken from their parents, forced to forget their native names, language and customs, and in many cases endured physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.
The 85-year-old pontiff called his visit to Canada “a pilgrimage of penance.”
To be sure, the Canadian government is just as culpable as the various Christian churches involved. The government mandated and funded these schools in which an estimated 150,000 indigenous children were enrolled. Thousands of unmarked graves since have been discovered on school properties containing what are believed to be the remains of children who died of illness, abuse or malnutrition.
The Pope called what occurred an “evil committed by so many Christians.” He told the First Nations people, “I humbly beg forgiveness.”
Thousands of Canada’s indigenous people welcomed the apology. For others it fell far short. They rightly want action — for the Catholic Church to make reparations and invest in native communities, to hold accountable those involved in the abuse, and return sacred indigenous artifacts that have been housed at the Vatican.
In a symbolic, but no less significant gesture, they have asked the pope to officially rescind a 15th century papal edict known as the “Doctrine of Discovery” in which the Church gave its blessing to the seizure of indigenous lands by European colonizers. Native peoples were driven from their ancestral homes under the doctrine in both North and South America.
Many indigenous adults will not be able to find it in their hearts to forgive these injustices. That is understandable. “Apologies are best shown through concrete actions that must come before any request for forgiveness,” Pam Palmater, a Mi’kmaw lawyer and chair in indigenous governance at Toronto Metropolitan University, wrote in the Toronto Star.
Still, what Pope Francis modeled in Canada prompts all of us to look at our own failings. In my own family, ample incidents of misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and unintentional slights have driven people apart — sometimes for decades.
Reflecting on the Pope’s example, I ask myself, “To whom do I need to express my sorrow? How can I begin to repair hurts that have occurred?
Cultivating compassion for those who have wronged me — trying to understand the woundedness in their own lives that might have motivated their actions — is one way I have arrived at forgiving some who have hurt me. Forgiving myself for my own complicity in wrongs that have occurred is also an integral part of the healing process.
Forgiveness propels us forward rather than keeping us imprisoned within the trauma and injustice we suffered. I am grateful for what transpired during the Pope’s Canadian visit, imperfect though his expression of remorse might have been. May his actions inspire us to both seek and offer forgiveness.
