Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue ~ IARCCUM.org
Online resource centre for Anglican-Roman Catholic relations
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Status of agreed statements:
Agreed statements have been agreed by the dialogue members and submitted to the sponsoring churches for study. These texts express the careful considerations of the members of the dialogue but are not official statements of either of the churches.
Persistent link: https://iarccum.org/doc/2140
Read an excerpt below
“I’m sorry.”
Many of us know the profound healing effect of hearing these or similar words spoken, in sincerity and truth, by someone who has in some way wronged us. Many of us also know the deeply humbling feeling of being the one who offers a genuine apology.
In recent years several churches have offered formal apologies to individuals and communities of people who have been harmed – sometimes traumatically – by our words and deeds. In Canada, for example, Catholic and Anglican leaders have formally apologized for our churches’ role in the destructive system of Indian Residential Schools.
Do such apologies make any difference? What makes an apology genuine? Why apologize in the first place? These are some of the questions we’ve heard people inside and outside of our churches ask, and they’re among the questions we’ve asked ourselves in preparing this latest work of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue of Canada, which also includes Lutheran and Eastern Catholic participation.
This document explores the idea of apology through the lenses of scripture, theology, and history. We hope that this study might help the members of our churches reflect on the meaning and importance – and limits – of making formal apologies to those whom we have wronged. It can also be a resource for church leaders who may be called upon to offer such an apology on behalf of the church to which they belong.
A user guide offers suggestions on some of the different ways this study might be used in your own local context, and we encourage you to find ways to do so. The season of Lent, with its penitential focus, would be a particularly appropriate time to reflect on some of these questions with the help of this document.
When an apology is genuinely offered, the hope is that it will be genuinely accepted and that it will mark a new beginning in the relationship between the one forgiven and the one forgiving.
Such forgiveness is at the heart of our common Christian faith – confessing sometimes painful truth in the hope that we might know reconciliation with one another and with God.
Most Rev. Brian Dunn
Archbishop of Halifax-Yarmouth
Roman Catholic Co-chair
Rt. Rev. Bruce Myers
Bishop of Quebec
Anglican Co-chair
