UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Eamon Duffy
The Guardian, Thursday 6 February 2014
This history of Catholic confession is in large part an impassioned response to sexual abuse by the clergy. But does it focus too much on sex?
Any Catholic over the age of 50 will have vivid memories of a now largely abandoned spiritual discipline, weekly or monthly visits to church to confess one’s sins to a priest. Beforehand, you prayerfully examined your conscience, working through the ways in which you might have broken the commandments, or succumbed to the “capital” or deadly sins – pride, envy, lust, wrath, avarice, gluttony and sloth. When your turn came (there was usually a queue) you entered the “dark box” of John Cornwell’s title, where, behind a shuttered grille, the priest waited for you to unload your fardle of failings. He might ask for clarification or offer advice before imposing a “penance” (usually reciting a few Hail Maries). Then, while you said an “act of contrition”, expressing sorrow and resolve not to sin again, the priest pronounced absolution.
This ritual might be a cursory routine lasting a couple of minutes or a searching ordeal that probed the soul. As parish priest and university chaplain, the future Pope John Paul II regularly detained penitents for up to an hour. Protestants dismissed confession as a licence to commit sin, confess glibly, then sin again. Posh Catholics in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited spoke of “going to scrape”, which perhaps lent credibility to the Protestant charge. But one way or another, in the years after the Second Vatican Council, those long queues dwindled to nothing, as Catholics in their millions simply stopped attending. Despite vehement attempts by John Paul II to promote its revival, frequent confession is now the custom of the few.
Private confession originated among soul-searching Irish monks in dark-age Europe. Backed by a ferocious tariff of punishments or “penances” for grave sins, the practice spread to the wider church, as a way of regulating the morals of a half-Christianised and often brutal lay world. Pastoral common sense gradually moderated the penances, and annual confession became mandatory for adults in the early 13th century as the emerging parish system gave everyone access to a local priest. This new discipline was in part a way of policing morals, in part a forum in which, as anxiety grew about heresy, orthodox Christian teaching could be transmitted and quizzed. From the 16th century onwards spiritual directors saw the sacrament as a means of promoting a more interiorised religion among the pious, while revivalist Catholic preachers saw it as an instrument to convert and civilise rural populations, whom they perceived as barely Christian and sunk in sin.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.