ho is sorry now? Just about everyone, it seems.

Illustration by Philippe Lechien/ Morgan Gaynin Inc.

Pete Rose is sorry he bet on baseball, and contrition seems a fine criterion for joining that little club called the Baseball Hall of Fame. Bill Janklow, at the time a Congressman from South Dakota, is sorry for speeding, running a stop sign, and running down a motorcyclist. Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law is sorry for not acting more decisively on allegations of child abuse by Roman Catholic priests. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is sorry--"deeply sorry"--for his behavior toward women in his past life as a movie star. Connecticut Governor John Rowland is sorry for inconveniently lying about accepting gifts from state contractors.

Remember that Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction"? Entertainer Janet Jackson told a press conference, "If I offended anybody, that was truly not my intention." So much for the exemplary bare-basics apology. As cultural commentator Frank Rich noted in The New York Times, Jackson refused to appear on the Grammys broadcast rather than "accede to CBS's demand that she perform a disingenuous, misty-eyed ritual 'apology' to the nation for her crime of a week earlier." By contrast, Justin Timberlake, her pop-star partner in that crime, apologized ritually if not convincingly, "looking like a schoolboy reporting to the principal's office," in Rich's words.

Corporations, too, are in an apologetic mood. Putnam Investments is sorry for "the unfortunate actions of a few individuals" whose trading practices threatened to undermine investor trust. Some countries are even sorrier. Late last year, President Svetozar Marovic of Serbia and Montenegro apologized to Bosnia for a war in which some 200,000 people died. That gesture came eight years after the signing of the Dayton peace agreement.

And in February, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program, made an explosive admission in a televised address. Acknowledging that he had shared Pakistani nuclear technology with other countries (presumably Iran, Libya, and North Korea), he talked about his "deep sense of regret" and his desire to atone for the "anguish" suffered by his countrymen. What about the anguish of those who might find themselves on the wrong end of that technology? Oops. Sorry about that.

The public apology, like comedic irony, seems inescapable in modern culture. What it signals, though, isn't so much sincerity and repentance as shallowness and self-serving manipulation.

Photo:© Neal Preston /Corbis

In classical rhetoric, the apology was a defense of one's actions. That form of apology is given eloquent expression in Plato's Apology, with Socrates on trial by Athenian leaders, some of whom were trying to divert attention from their own conspiratorial tendencies. Socrates shows some disingenuous qualities as an apologist (or self-defender), says Michael Gillespie, a Duke political-science professor who specializes in political philosophy. Socrates laments his poor skills in rhetoric, for example, but delivers a perfectly patterned rhetorical speech. He asserts that he's not an atheist, but he doesn't show support for the gods of the city. He probably could have escaped a drastic penalty had he agreed to philosophize in private rather than in the very public agora. But he never apologizes--in the classical or the modern sense of the word--in his defense, and he even taunts his accusers by declaring that they should support him at public expense.

According to Duke religion professor Elizabeth Clark, in early Christianity, an "apology" was a speech for the defense of Christianity against pagan persecutors, or later, against pagan intellectuals who denigrated the faith. By that older definition, she says, the apology of Emperor Theodosius was a model. In 390, the citizens of Thessalonica (now a part of Greece) rioted against the garrison of the legion stationed there and murdered its commander. Theodosius sent an invitation for the Thessalonicans to gather for a public spectacle. By his order, his army then proceeded to massacre 7,000 of them. The bishop of Milan demanded that the emperor make a religious confession of guilt and do penance; the alternative was excommunication. Theodosius acceded.

"We might guess," Clark says, that "ordinary folks were awed to see their emperor doing public penance, meaning he couldn't take the Eucharist and perhaps performed other symbolic deeds indicating his repentance. We know nothing certain about what personal feelings, religious or otherwise, Theodosius might have had. He was known as devout, but with a hot temper that could lead him to rash acts."

When it comes to modern public apologies, Duke Divinity School Dean L. Gregory Jones M.Div. '85, Ph.D. '88 is skeptical about the extent of true penitence. He calls Pete Rose's acknowledgment of his betting habits just another example of "spinning sorrow." Rose only confessed when it became clearly in his self-interest to do so; his election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame hangs in the balance. As Jones puts it in an essay in The Christian Century, "the true test of a person's capacity to attend the truth" involves facing the consequences, regardless of the cost to oneself. Rose, though, hasn't acknowledged that he has any problem to deal with, much less that he has committed to steps that would point to repentance. In the Rose-colored view of the world, coming clean should be enough. That's an embrace of "cheap forgiveness," according to Jones. And something so cheap is not meaningful.

Jones is particularly troubled by a telling quote in Rose's book: "I'm sure that I'm supposed to act all sorry or sad or guilty now that I've accepted that I've done something wrong. But you see, I'm just not built that way." The issue isn't simply that Rose has shown no remorse, Jones says. Rather, it is that the onetime baseball great apparently lacks the capacity to do so.

The Rose episode signals a cultural fascination with the self, Jones says, that obscures the meaning of concepts like sin and repentance--concepts that, properly speaking, should demand reaching deeply into the heart and soul, Jones says. "Too often, these public issues of forgiveness are about how other people have treated me. It's amazing to watch Pete Rose actually trying to spin this into his being a victim: He's been deprived of the Hall of Fame all these years, and, goodness gracious, aren't we supposed to feel sorry for him?"

Jones finds in Bill Clinton a political parallel with Rose's reluctant apology. Just after Clinton offered his apology for his relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky, Jones wrote about the "shallow ring to the president's plea." Clinton's apology fell "far short of a true confession," he added, and so it didn't merit forgiveness. "Authentic forgiveness requires confession to be linked to truthfulness, contrition, and repentance. The president's apology fails on all three counts." Instead, Clinton tried to shift the blame to a zealous investigator. He didn't acknowledge having betrayed many people with his sexual misconduct and his subsequent deception--his wife and daughter, those aides and friends who put their own credibility on the line to defend him, and the public. And he didn't outline any concrete steps toward changing his life pattern of apparent sexual recklessness.