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So Sorry The promiscuity of public apologies.

By Posted Wednesday, March 15, 2000, at 3:00 AM ET

Last weekend the pope apologized for two millennia of misdeeds by the Catholic Church. Is such an apology a public service, or does it merely reopen old wounds? In 1997, Seth Stevenson summarized the history of national apologies, and in 1998 Jacob Weisberg outlined several rules for making them.

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