c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com, or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ The idea that Americans should”apologize”for past injustices to blacks _ or to anyone else, for that matter _ is obscene.

It’s an insult to the past to think that merely apologizing for crimes against humanity is enough. Moreover, it’s an insult to the living to think that one can apologize for something someone else did. Collective apologies are both empty and dishonest, and represent the sad notion of collective guilt run rampant.

I cannot apologize for what my great grandparents did to Africans in the slave trade, because my great grandparents were not in the United States during slavery.”All right,”the apologists say,”but Americans did terrible things to blacks and you are an American and therefore you are guilty!” Oh, no I’m not. I’m only guilty for what I have or have not done; I’m not guilty for someone else’s actions.

Much better than an apology _ and free from moral mushiness _ is a condemnation.

Americans should denounce the slave trade, slavery, Jim Crow laws and every other kind of racism and bigotry. And we should pledge to eliminate racism from our society. That kind of denunciation and repudiation makes sense, but a mealy-mouthed, slobbering apology is morally infantile.

By the way, denouncing slavery means we also must denounce slave owners _ whether they be Thomas Jefferson or Jesuits _ and those who did not speak up against its evils (popes remained silent on the issue until 1890). We judge no one’s conscience but only their actions or inaction.

There’s also a demand afoot that Pope John Paul II apologize for the Holocaust. Nonsense! He didn’t do it. Quite the contrary, he has denounced it on every possible occasion. He also has repudiated church leaders who supported it. But it would be a good idea if he repudiated those who remained silent, too.

While we’re at it, has anyone besides me noticed the large number of Irish names in news stories about the volcano in Montserrat? How can there be people on that island named Ryan and Hogan and Farrell? The answer reveals a particularly nasty episode in the history of English imperialism.

After Oliver Cromwell slaughtered tens of thousands of Irish men, women, and children, he and his brother decided it would be”salutary”for many of the remaining Irish to be sold into slavery for the good of their souls. Thousands of Irish slaves were shipped off to the West Indies, settling especially on Montserrat.

Many married African slaves there. English on the tiny island is still spoken with a brogue, the native dances are similar to Irish step dances, and the patron of the parish church in Plymouth, the capital city now covered with volcanic ash, is St. Patrick.

All this is to say there’s a statute of limitations on guilt. The English today are not responsible for Cromwell’s crimes, so there’s no need for them to apologize for what happened to the Irish sent to Montserrat.

But there is an obligation on the part of the English to repudiate the genocide and oppression in Ireland during the past 700 years.

The English apologize to the Irish? Hardly.

But acknowledge that bigotry past and present is wrong? Repudiate the murder and oppression of the past? Admit that past oppression is responsible for present”troubles?”Well, let’s not anyone hold their breath.

MJP END GREELEY