Numbers 32:23 reminds us that “Be sure that your sin will find you out. ”
On the positive note, at least apology is done while the institution is still alive and kicking. I only see confessions and apology on life-long guilt if a person is dying.
An article to be posted on the Church’s website will say:
Charles Darwin, 200 years from your birth [in 1809], the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests.
The article has been written by the Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, the director of mission and public affairs of the Archbishops’ Council, the Church’s managing body, which is headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.
Dr Brown writes:
People, and institutions, make mistakes and Christian people and Churches are no exception. When a big new idea emerges that changes the way people look at the world, it’s easy to feel that every old idea, every certainty, is under attack and then to do battle against the new insights. The Church made that mistake with Galileo’s astronomy and has since realised its error. Some Church people did it again in the 1860s with Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. So it is important to think again about Darwin’s impact on religious thinking, then and now.
Dr Brown adds:
His [Darwin’s] theory caused offence because it challenged the view that God had created human beings as an entirely different kind of creation to the rest of the animal world. But while it is not difficult to see why evolutionary thinking was offensive at the time, on reflection it is not such an earth-shattering idea.
But former Conservative, Minister Ann Widdecombe, who left the Church of England to become a Roman Catholic, said:
It’s absolutely ludicrous. Why don’t we have the Italians apologising for Pontius Pilate? We’ve already apologised for slavery and for the Crusades. When is it all going to stop? It’s insane and makes the Church of England look ridiculous.
Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Association, said:
It does seem rather crazy for an institution to address an apology to an individual so long after his death. As well as being much too late, the message strikes me as insincere, as if there is an unspoken ‘but’ behind the text. However, if it means that from now on the Church of England will say ‘No’ to the teaching of creationism in school science lessons, then we would accept the apology on Darwin’s behalf.
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