Should every apology lead to forgiveness? This is a complex moral question. It would be tempting to answer yes, and to believe that all human beings are worthy of redemption. There are always outliers in any group, and overall, it is reasonable to assume that the vast majority of people are worthy of a second chance, especially when they make an honest and sincere apology.

The world is more complex than this trite observation would have you believe. It’s not only people who issue apologies. Sometimes, it’s entire organizations and institutions. One in particular, the Catholic Church, has committed so many atrocities over the centuries of its existence that it would take many lifetimes of work to simply identify them all, let alone do anything about them.

One of the many recent scandals it is involved with is the uncovering of mass graves in their 80 government sponsored boarding gulags. The rampant sexual, physical, and mental abuse suffered at their hands has never been full accounted for. The Church, which keeps meticulous records, have provided no helpful documentation that would harm their financial bottom line. Instead, they offered a partial apology that took only part of the blame for what had happened:

“The Church recognizes that it has played a part in traumas experienced by Native children,” the document said, saying “these tragedies” led to addiction, domestic abuse, abandonment and neglect that harmed families.

Played a part? They were the main event! It almost sounds like they want to throw their hands in the air and say: “Well, it was also the government’s fault for sending those guys to our rape dens in the first place”. Sure, the government place them in your care, which was wrong to begin with, but the Church could have showed them the love, compassion and charity they keep claiming to have a monopoly on. Instead, they beat them, starved them, sexually abused them, and countless other horrors that went on for decades. When you need to take responsibility for literal crimes against humanity, maybe don’t start with “played a part”.

To offer a proper apology, it’s important to be honest when it comes to exactly what part you played. Take for instance the part they played in the extermination of the Jews in Nazi Germany: in exchange for becoming the official religion of the country, they helped the exterminators find the families, often pretending to provide asylum for them but turning them in anyways, and whisking away the perpetrators to safe territory in Latin America when the whole thing went tits up. Those are things they have yet to specifically apologize for as well, or make up for in any way. Instead, they still collect part of every German citizen’s paycheck, unless that persons specifically asks not to. That deal with the Nazi stuck around, unsurprisingly.

This pathetic apology is a way to try and reconcile their Native believers, who feel a great deal of uncertainty about their faith following the harrowing details of the history of abuse. For most old Catholics, who’s ancestors also had their faith imbued at the edge of a sword, enough time has passed that the church’s atrocities are long forgotten. In Native communities, that wounds of the past are still fresh. It’s causing problems for the church’s bottom line, so something had to be done. Their plan? An impotent apology that serves only to highlight just how out of touch they are, and a promise to “listen”. Platitudes and empty gestures. Pathetic.