Cardinal Egan's Non-apology Apology

By John McQuaid
Forbes
February 9, 2012

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmcquaid/2012/02/08/cardinal-egans-non-apology-apology/

Image via Wikipedia

Cardinal Edward Egan says he didn’t really mean it when he apologized a decade ago, as Bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., for sexual abuse committed by priests in his diocese, and the media is taking note.

But actually, that’s not really true. Egan, the retired Archbishop of New York, sitting so high in the saddle of his high horse that he must be feeling a bit light-headed, was not retracting an earlier apology. He was clarifying that it was never an apology at all. Rather, it was a non-apology apology: a bit of rhetorical legerdemain designed to appease critics while conceding nothing.

CT Magazine: In 2002, you wrote a letter to parishioners in which you said, “If in hindsight we discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry.”

EGAN: First of all, I should never have said that. I did say if we did anything wrong, I’m sorry, but I don’t think we did anything wrong. But I hate to go back over this. I think there’s more to life than that one issue, especially when I had no cases.

Egan points out that his original statement is conditional: if, in the future, we find we made mistakes in the past, I’m sorry. It never was a straight apology, the assumption of responsibility that victims were looking for, and which Egan owed them, and his entire flock. It was not even a concession that “mistakes were made.” Quite the contrary. No mistakes were made. As far as Egan’s concerned, they did a heck of a job.

The non-apology apology has become the standard way in our political culture to defuse a crisis while evading responsibility for it. Outright defiance usually makes a controversy worse, so the non-apology-apology is a brilliant innovation in crisis management. It throws the media a bone. Maybe it placates critics. It has the outward form of conciliation and remorse without the actual content. It’s a wink to all your supporters that you never gave an inch.

It’s all part of the responsibility/accountability-free zone that public life has become. Everybody has a constituency they are playing to, whether it’s Fox News or the Vatican, and preserving your rep with them overrides any incentive to engage in an actual public accounting of what happened.

Egan’s case is of a man so full of himself and his own good works, and so unaccustomed to having them questioned, that he cannot or will not see the monstrousness that has been perpetrated all around him. Which he is definitely not sorry about.