I have been thinking about the difference between “apology” and “repentance” – or, at a more social level, between “I’m sorry” and “I confess”.

I think we may be getting them rather clumsily mixed up – and, increasingly, I think it matters. In some cases the difference is completely clear: “I’m sorry” means simply “It causes me sadness”. “Sorry” and “sorrow” have the same linguistic root. When we say to a friend, “I am sorry that your mother died”, we mean “I share your sadness”, not “I am guilty of her murder”. To say “I apologise that your mother died”, would imply at least some culpability in her demise.

But frequently the difference is blurred: “Just say you’re sorry”, we instruct small children and often it is not clear (even to us, never mind to them) whether we mean, “Show me you are sad that you have broken my favourite vase; be more aware and sensitive”, or, “Show me you know you broke the vase because you played with it disobediently; accept your responsibility and fault”. (And often of course we mean both.)
Or you have a quarrel with a friend and want to make up. You say, “I’m sorry” and they say, or imply, “So you admit I was right”, while what you actually meant was something rather different – for example that you are sad that you quarrelled and you now want to renegotiate more civilly. Or – this is a common one – you bump into someone on a crowded street and hurt their foot or cause them to drop their bag. You say, “I’m sorry”, and they say, “It wasn’t your fault”. It probably is not going to be helpful at this moment to say, “I never said it was”. But in fact you had not said it was – you had said you were sad that this accident had occurred. They are two different things.