The word of the week seems to have been ‘Apology’. First there was the shindy about the visit by the Emperor of Japan. with explanations about the infinite subtleties of the different Japanese ways of saying ‘sorry’. In Australia they have even had National Sorry Day, which included apologising to the aborigines for past mistreatment. It was then announced that, under the present Pope, the Vatican has apparently issued 100 apologies, most recently concerning Catholics and the Holocaust, but also including the trial of Galileo. And now it seems that Savonarola, the disgraced Dominican of Renaissance Florence, is going to be canonised. Meanwhile Mr. Blair is being told to apologise for this and that, including the Irish Potato Famine.

What are we to make of all this? Well, the sad truth is that apologies can’t be made in this way, on behalf of other people. Regrets can. And so can reparations, which often need to be made injustice for the shortcomings of others.

The Bible contains clearly developing insights about these responsibilities. "I am the Lord your God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me" [Exodus 20:5] but then "The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father for the iniquity of the son" [Ezekiel 18:20]. Jesus was at pains to extract from individuals apologies for their own failures. His reproachful look at Peter after the triple betrayal was followed by his triple searching questioning of Peter: "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"

Where apologies have not been given by an offender in life, they cannot be given by another. Perhaps they can be given by the perpetrator beyond this life. What subsequent generations can do is learn from the failures of the past and not repeat them. We cannot apologise for the Potato Famine for we were not around in 1845; we can, however, do our best to stop similar things happening again.