Holy apologies.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Pope John Paul II apologizes for injustices against women - Unplugged - Column

The other day in the mail with my very pretentious J. Peterman catalogue and my Publisher's Clearinghouse notice thanking me for sending Ed McMahon the map to my house so he will better be able to find me on that great prize-awarding day, I got a letter from the Pope. I was at first overwhelmed by His Thoughtfulness. Then I found out he had sent a letter to every woman. But still. And I did appreciate the Nixon stamp--an inspired bit of whimsy.

It wasn't one of those pray-or-else chain letters, one of those, "Don't be like Mrs. Eulah Banks, of Okra, North Carolina, whose husband fell into the moving trash compactor on the back of his self-owned garbage truck after she delayed her reply." It was a letter of apology. Talk about your letter bombs! Lately it seems as if everybody is apologizing. Well, everybody but O.J.

It has been a pretty sorry summer. Lots of religions are apologizing for things. I guess they are not sleeping well. Recently 800 German Christians apologized to some baffled Danes for the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands. In the United States, the Southern Baptist convention formally and finally apologized to African Americans for defending slavery in the antebellum South and for condoning contemporary racism. African Americans everywhere were relieved. They'd been waiting. Go get out your Tracy Chapman album and crank up, "Sorry is all that you can say" to window-rattling decibels.

In his letter of apology, entitled, "Ego Sum Okay, Vos est Excommunicatus," the Pope apologized for any (?!) injustices against women in the name of the Roman Catholic Church. The Jesuits had earlier apologized for abetting centuries of male domination and had pledged their personal solidarity with women, frightening many coeds at Boston College.

This Papal letter reminds me of that Galileo moment a few years back. After seventeen years of debate, a special Papal commission announced that Galileo was right all those 353 years ago when he said that the Sun, not the Earth, not even the Pope, was the center of the universe. The Papal guards tried to get Galileo to apologize under house arrest, but he went crazy instead. Things I still can't figure out--we're talking Cape Canaveral already, one giant putt for mankind, etc. Was it so hard to get a meeting room at the Vatican? Why do it anyway?

But there is no "Why now?" to this Papal apology. The U.N. Conference on Women is about to convene in Beijing and His Extreme Cleverness is trying to carp the...