Darwinism and popular culture: More on Church of England's recent bout of "false apology syndrome"

Following up on the Brit media story about the Church of England's faux apology to Charles Darwin, I note where Jonathan Petre (Daily Mail, September 13, 2008) quotes

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.’

Yes it does, because as I observed earlier, there is no evidence that the Church of England ever wronged Darwin particularly.

On this phenomenon of "false apology syndrome", psychiatrist and essayist Theodore Dalrymple notes,

Guilt, by its very nature, ought to be connected to responsibility; it ought, moreover, to be in proportion to the wrongdoing that is its occasion. To assume a guilt greater than the responsibility warrants is actually a form of grandiosity or self-aggrandisement. The psychological mechanism seems to be something like this: “I feel very guilty, therefore I must be very important.”

In some case, it is a substitute for importance, or for a loss of importance.

That would certainly apply to the Church of England, one of the many Churches No One Goes To Any More, as Kathy Shaidle puts it.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy: