Thirty percent of our homeless are veterans. There are some things so heavy that those with responsibility can not apologize in any way that could satisfy the victimized. It seems to me to put an extra burden on the victim, a pressure to be nice and ''civilized'' and forgive in return. But mankind's wounded soul is nothing like civilized. It has a long memory and forgives very slowly, if at all.
Forgiveness is a special grace and it puts some burden on the apologizer.
It's a long road, but perhaps Robert McNamara could have siphoned off some personal money to buy some homeless veterans a place to live. As to the holocaust, Christian churches might make the barest beginning by reminding us all that Jesus, his mother, his whole family, his friends and his apostles were all Jews and that for any Christian to be anti-semitic is to deny his own religious roots. The pope's apology to women lacked something. We didn't hear anything about the hardships to wives and mothers, especially in the Third World, who are not allowed to choose how many children they can afford emotionally and financially. The poorest of the poor were told to ''take whatever God sends'' with no regard for the realities that God wasn't sending the wherewithal and children were being born into hunger and privation.