There's a trick to making the non-apology apology: it needs to be truthful, and not just misleading. You say you are very sorry that offence has been taken and that your words have hurt people. This is quite true, because such apologies are only ever issued under duress, and you profoundly regret having to make them. You do not say you repent or recant the offending opinion. Then you shut up.
The Rev Dr Peter Mullen, in trouble for his blog post demanding that gays be tattooed with health warnings as if they were cigarette packets, has issued to PA a non-apology apology which goes on just one sentence too long.
I did not intend to cause offence when I made some joking remarks about homosexuals. I was not actually meaning to criticise individual homosexual persons, but the promoters of gay culture. However, my remarks have caused offence and for this I am sorry and make a full and complete apology.
Not actually meaning to criticise individual homosexual persons: how does this square with the sentence immediately before the tattooing joke?
I suspect [Matthew Parris] is not really interested in morality of any kind - except as a special plea to excuse his lust for gratification at whatever cost to human dignity and the sanctity of human life
It's much easier to believe that the tattooing remarks were meant to be funny than that this wasn't meant as criticism of an identifiable homosexual person. Perhaps he is trying to say that Parris, though a sex-crazed pervert, should not actually be tattooed. But that's not funny, either.
Rectors, like Mullen, can't in practice be sacked for anything short of a criminal offence and this is on balance a good thing. I would rather they were free to be obnoxious idiots or even saints than subject to the whims of any passing bishop. But I'm beginning to think that retirement due to ill-health would be his best option – except, of course, that then he'd have to earn his living by his pen.
