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By Linda Green
United Methodist News Service

Are the recent public apologies heard from celebrities, athletes, government officials and others accused of wrongdoing sincere or manufactured by publicists trying to minimize the damage?

United Methodist ethicists and others answer the question with a yes and a no.

"I fear that apologies have become techniques for diminishing the consequences of behaviors that are destructive and damaging," said Bishop Kenneth Carder, professor of the practice of Christian ministry at Duke Divinity School.

"When apologies are deeply rooted in confession, contrition, a recognition of the damage that one has done and one's implication in the hurt of others - in the context of genuine repentance and confession with a goal of restoration of integrity or relationships and restitution for damage done, then apologies have depth," Carder said.

One way the church has failed the broader society "or contributed to this superficiality" of apologies, Carder said, is in not helping the broader culture know how to confess. "I am troubled by the elimination of prayers of confession in so many worship services."

"Authentic confession takes place in a community which holds me in love and holds me accountable," he said, referring to the model the early Methodist bands or small groups used when they asked one another what sins had been committed and temptations had been faced since they last met.

The rash of recent apologies has resulted in cynicism and skepticism, leaving the public to wonder if they are apologizing for their conduct or because they were caught.

"The apologies we hear today are mea culpa," said the Rev. Katie Cannon, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Va. "Repentance means being willing to make restitution or reparation. A sacrifice has to be offered and some good faith act needs to follow so that it is not cheap or an action that has no substance behind it."

The World Wide Web is full of sites that teach people how to say "I'm sorry." The slogan of one site is "saying I'm sorry is an act that can change the world."

The Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, a retired member of the Baltimore-Washington Conference, said that while there is truth in the slogan, such Web sites might be indicators that "we have not made it a habit to say I'm sorry and we have not cultivated within ourselves the capacity, the grace or readiness to say I'm sorry." Wogaman is currently a Christian ethicist and pastor of St. Luke UMC in Omaha, Neb.

Cannon agreed. "Some basic human social skills are gone," she said, noting that today's high-tech culture has lost the ability to learn from human interaction. "We need these sites for education of the high-tech generation or for those who live their whole lives on the computer."

Web sites that teach the science of apology show that society has lost some measure of civility, according to the Rev. Rosetta Ross, dean of academic affairs at Howard University in Washington. In an era where the idea of living with integrity is challenging for some people, the increase in incivility, antagonism, intolerance and self-centeredness "make for all types of offenses both to individuals and to society, so a lot of apologies follow."

Earlier in the year, news reports highlighted the apology given by a former Klux Klux Klansman to U.S. Rep. John Lewis, who was a civil rights worker in the 1960s. The man attacked Lewis and nearly 50 years later he apologized to Lewis and to other African Americans for his numerous acts of hatred.

A true apology communicates that something has happened and is something that one would not willingly do again, Ross pointed out. "That he (the Klansman) apologized, even though it was 30 or more years later, was a reflection of behavioral change or a complete turnaround," she said. "In terms of a public behavioral change, that obviously is one."

One cannot always know the authenticity of an apology when judging the content of another person's heart, Wogaman pointed out. An authentic apology does more than convey a sense of regretting a wrong, he said. Real people have been hurt and trust has been violated. "If they (apologies) are very vague in general, it conveys something less than a grasp of why it matters."

According to Carder, apology involves some type of restitution. The depth of apology cannot be a technique to manipulate others, he said. "It has to be deeper than a polite, magnanimous expression of regret."