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JOHN PAUL II COLLEGE OF DAVAO

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION
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SCP-TOPICS: MIDTERM PERIOD TOPICS

The Apologies made by St. John Paul II in behalf of the

Church’s mistakes
The Apologies Made by St. John Paul II in Behalf of the
Lesson Title
Church’s Mistakes
Learning Outcome(s) Appreciate the Pope’s concern to be reconciled with others
Time Frame 3 hrs

At SJPIICD, I Matter!

LEARNING INTENT!
Words to Ponder

This section provides meaning and definition of the

terminologies that are significant for better understanding of the
terms used throughout the simplified course pack of Reed 2. As you
go through the labyrinth of learning, in case you will be confronted
with difficulty of the terms refer to the defined terms for you to have
a clear picture of the learning concepts.

Great Jubilee 2000 – was a major event in the Roman

Catholic Church, held from Christmas Eve
(December 24) 1999 to Epiphany (January 6)
2001. Like other previous Jubilee years, it was a
celebration of the mercy of God and forgiveness
of sins.

Mea Culpa – is a formal acknowledgment of personal fault

or error.

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COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT
Physically Detached Yet Academically Attached

Essential Content

Introduction. Pope John Paul II made many apologies. During

his long reign as Pope, he apologized to Jews, women, people
convicted by the Inquisition, Muslims killed by the Crusaders
and almost everyone who had suffered at the hands of the
Catholic Church over the years. Pope John Paul II is often
described as "a true believer of forgiveness and compassion."
He did not only preach about forgiveness, but he lived a life of
forgiveness until his death.

The Idea of Forgiveness. A common error in talking about

forgiveness is the challenge to "forgive and forget." To forgive is
to give up any desire for recrimination or revenge. It is possible
to do that, but what is not possible is to let go of the memory
of hurt caused by others. Jesus never commanded us to do
what is impossible, and what he wants us to do is control the
memory so that it will not control us. Another common error is
to portray forgiveness as an easy task. Consider Jesus' dying
words of forgiveness aimed at his executioners. Those words
are left out of many of the oldest manuscripts. Biblical scholars
are rather certain that Jesus actually said the words, and they
wonder if perhaps the copyists left the words out because they
were having trouble themselves forgiving the people responsible
for the death of Jesus. Real forgiveness is hard. It requires lots
of help from God.

Preparation for the Third Millennium. In Roman Catholic

tradition, a jubilee or Holy Year is a year of forgiveness of sins
and also the punishment due to sin. It is a year of reconciliation
between adversaries, of conversion and receiving the
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COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT
Physically Detached Yet Academically Attached

Sacrament of Reconciliation, "...and consequently of solidarity,

hope, justice, commitment to serve God with joy and in peace
with our brothers and sisters." A jubilee can be "ordinary" if it
falls after the set period of years, and "extraordinary" when it
is proclaimed for some outstanding event.
The Great Jubilee of the year 2000 included a day of Prayer
for Forgiveness of the Sins of the Church on March 12, 2000.
It is one particularly rich ceremony of the Jubilee, dubbed the
"Day of Forgiveness", the first Sunday of Lent. There Pope John
Paul II begged forgiveness from God for the sins committed by
members of the Church, and particularly sins committed in the
name of the Church.

Seven senior curial officials read special prayers asking for

forgiveness in specific areas. The first, Benin's Cardinal
Bernardin Gantin, then dean of the College of Cardinals, made
a general confession of Christians' sins in the course of history.
Joseph Ratzinger, cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, called for confession of faults for the use
of "non-evangelical methods" in the service of faith, as for
example, in the Inquisition. Roger Etchegaray, cardinal
president of the Central Committee for the Jubilee, exhorted
the confession of sins that caused division among Christians;
Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy, president of the Pontifical
Council for Promoting Christian Unity, acknowledged the faults
committed "against the people of the Covenant," the Jews; and
Japanese Archbishop Stephen Fumio Hamao, president of the
Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and
Itinerant People, mentioned sins committed against love,
peace, the rights of peoples, respect of cultures and religions.
Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, president of the Pontifical
Council for Interreligious Dialogue, requested confession of
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COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT
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sins that have wounded the dignity of woman and the unity of
mankind. Finally, Vietnamese Archbishop François Xavier
Nguyên Van Thuân, president of the Pontifical Council for
Justice and Peace, encouraged confession of sins in the area of
fundamental rights of the human person: abuses against
children, marginalization of the poor, suppression of the
unborn in the maternal womb or their use for experimentation.

This mea culpa of the Church was widely applauded, but

some members of the Catholic Church felt that it had gone too
far, and had damaged the doctrine that the Church is holy. For
his part, at the prayer of the Angelus later in the day, Pope
John Paul II indicated that such a ceremony was necessary.
"The Holy Year is a time of purification: the Church is Holy
because Christ is her Head and Spouse, the Spirit is her
vivifying soul, and the Blessed Virgin and the saints are her
most authentic expression. However, the children of the
Church know the reality of sin, whose shadows are reflected in
her, darkening her beauty. Because of this, the Church does
not cease to implore God's forgiveness for the sins of her
members."

The Roman Catholic Church’s Admission. In 1633, the

Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church forced Galileo
Galilei, one of the founders of modern science, to recant his
theory that the Earth moves around the Sun. He concluded
that it was the Sun is at the center of the universe. This was
not accepted by the Catholic Church. Under threat of torture,
Galileo had been seen facing his inquisitors recanted. But as
he left the courtroom, he is said to have muttered, ‘all the same,
it moves’.

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COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION
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Pope John Paul II requested to re-open the case of Galileo

Galilei. Around 359 years later, the Church finally agreed. At a
ceremony in Rome, before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences,
Pope John Paul II officially declared that Galileo was right. The
formal rehabilitation was based on the findings of a committee
of the Academy the Pope set up in 1979, soon after taking office.
The committee decided the Inquisition had acted in good faith,
but was wrong.

In fact, the Inquisition’s verdict was uncannily similar to

cautious statements by modern officialdom on more recent
scientific conclusions, such as predictions about greenhouse
warming. The Inquisition ruled that Galileo could not prove
‘beyond doubt’ that the Earth orbits the Sun, so they could not
reinterpret scriptures implying otherwise. However, Pope John
Paul II decide to re-open the case for two reasons. First, the
insufficient attention that had been paid to the whole case.
Second, The dissatisfaction with ambiguity contained in the
Vat II Church document entitled “Guadium et Spes” ( Joy and
Hope).

The List of Apologies Made by St. John Paul II. Even before
he became the Pope, he was a prominent editor and supporter
of initiatives like the Letter of Reconciliation of the Polish
Bishops to the German Bishops from 1965. As Pope, he
officially made public apologies for over 100 of these
wrongdoings, including:
1. The legal process on the Italian scientist and philosopher
Galileo Galilei, himself a devout Catholic, around 1633 (31
October 1992).
2. Christians involved in the African slave trade (14 August
1985)
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3. The Church's role in burnings at the stake and the

religious wars that followed the Protestant Reformation
(May 1995, in the Czech Republic).
4. The inactivity and silence of many Catholics during the
Holocaust (16 March 1998).
5. In his December 18, 1999 speech in Prague, Pope John
Paul II expressed "deep sorrow" for Hus' death and praised
his "moral courage."
6. For the Crusaders' Sack of Constantinople in 1204.
7. On November 20, 2001, from a laptop in the Vatican, Pope
John Paul II sent his first e-mail apologizing for the
Catholic sex abuse cases, the Church-backed "Stolen
Generations" of Aboriginal children in Australia, and to
China for the behavior of Catholic missionaries in colonial
times.
8. In December 1999, at the request of Joseph Cardinal
Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith who would later become Pope
Benedict XVI, the International Theological Commission
presented its study on the topic Memory and
Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past. The
purpose of this document is "not to examine particular
historical cases but rather to clarify the presuppositions
that ground repentance for past faults." It examines
repentance for past faults in the context of sociology,
ecclesiology and theology.

Pope John Paul II’s Mea Culpa. Pope John Paul II's long-
awaited and unprecedented apology for the sins of Christians
through the ages was echoed by local churches in the United
States and elsewhere and generally welcomed by non-Catholics
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 ST. JOHN PAUL II COLLEGE OF DAVAO
COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT
Physically Detached Yet Academically Attached

around the world. Indeed, the March 12 event previously

discussed was the culmination of the Church's “examination of
conscience” for the Great Jubilee year.

The Pope's own initiative, the idea of a day of atonement,

met some resistance even inside the Vatican. It was designed
to acknowledge shortcomings in the Church's past, in order to
give Catholics a sense of reconciliation and make future
evangelization more credible.

“We forgive and we ask forgiveness!” the Pope said during

the historic Lenten liturgy in St. Peter's Basilica. He and seven
top Vatican officials (Cardinals) pronounced a “request for
pardon” for sins against Christian unity, the use of violence in
serving the truth, hostility toward Jews and other religions, the
marginalization of women, and wrongs — like abortion —
against society's weakest members.

Pope John Paul II said the Church has had many saints,
but some of its members have shown disobedience to God and
inconsistency with the faith — in the past and present.

“For the part that each of us, with his behavior, has had
in these evils that have disfigured the face of the Church,
we humbly ask forgiveness,” he said.

At the conclusion of the apology liturgy, the Pope embraced

and kissed the crucifix and, in a final blessing, declared that
“never again” should such sins be committed. Th event was
heard and seen by thousands of people attended the service,
packing the basilica and watching on giant-screen TV in the
square outside.
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 ST. JOHN PAUL II COLLEGE OF DAVAO
COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT
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Commentators inside and outside the Church hailed the

event as a historic step, and the Pope was described by one
Italian newspaper as a “voice in the wilderness” for his
willingness to publicly ask forgiveness.

Jewish leaders also praised the Pope, but some said he should
have been more specific about the Holocaust. In Israel, where
the Pope was to visit later in the month, Chief Rabbi Israel Meir
Lau welcomed the Pope's words but said the Church needs to
apologize for the actions of Pope Pius XII during World War II.

In New York, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith

said that in failing to specifically mention the Holocaust, the
Pope had “missed a historic opportunity to bring closure” to
Christian responsibility for sins against Jews.

In a statement, the German Evangelical Church said the

Pope offered “words worthy of the greatest respect and
gratitude.” The Rev. Manfred Kock, head of the 28 million-
member Protestant church, praised the Holy Father's overture
in an interview with ZENIT, the Rome-based news service:

“The Roman Catholic Church and John Paul II

deserve gratitude and respect for the way in which they
have addressed the faults of the past. The gesture is
important because, up until now, many of us had the
impression that the Catholic Church had problems
recognizing its past errors.”

Rev. Kock, whose church has made a similar mea culpa

for past wrongs, has said that the office of the papacy is
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 ST. JOHN PAUL II COLLEGE OF DAVAO
COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT
Physically Detached Yet Academically Attached

becoming “a unitary figure symbolic of Christianity.” In the

United States, local bishops took their cue from the Bishop of
Rome and conducted Lenten services with public apologies for
Church actions against Jews, women, native peoples and other
groups.

Vatican officials emphasized that the Church's apology

was not a political but a religious act, addressed first of all to
God. The Church's mea culpa cannot be seen as a form of “self-
flagellation” performed in public for the benefit of others, said
French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, president of the Vatican's
Jubilee Committee.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the International

Theological Commission, said the Church was not setting itself
up as a tribunal to judge the actions of past Christians. The
aim was to “know ourselves and open ourselves to the
purification of memories and to our true renewal,” he said. In
the document they made, it said that the Church was holy and
cannot sin, but that its members have sinned through the ages.
Acknowledging these faults can foster renewal and
reconciliation in the present, it said.

Reflection. The gestures made by Pope John Paul II in behalf

of the Catholic Church reminded us the importance of the
Gospel value of forgiveness. To stay humble as shown by the
Pope is still a great challenge in our time today. What we need
to do is to have the courage to admit one’s fault. It is important
to remind ourselves that to err is human to forgive is Divine.
The first step in developing this value is awareness. It is
because awareness is the beginning of change.

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Caroll, R. Pope says sorry for sin of Church (2000). Retrieved March 23, 2021 from
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