The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession

John Cornwell

For Catholics of my generation visits to the “dark box” were a weekly occurrence; we were very regular confession-goers. The regularity, however, didn’t diminish the feelings of trepidation and dread associated with the experience. In my teenage years, finding a “sympathetic” priest was a small blessing. I well remember when the word went around within our circle that one particular priest had a lenient — perhaps that should be a forgiving — attitude to immodest thoughts and actions. Not surprisingly, he was quickly nicknamed “the jagger’s priest”.

Looking back, the obsession with sex and sexual sins undoubtedly inculcated in us a deep and abiding sense of guilt, something that in later life inhibited many of us when it came to relationships. On the positive side — and this is a side very much neglected in what is otherwise a compelling history of confession — the unburdening of sin that was such a central part of confession, had a cleansing and therapeutic effect, though perhaps not long-lasting.

Cornwell, author of Hitler’s Pope and The Pontiff in Winter (a very critical appraisal of the pontificate of John Paul II), argues that the “rejection of confession is a crucial symptom of a wider crisis within the Catholic Church”. There has been, he says, a “paradigm shift” that has “affected the way many Catholics understand sin, virtue, and the nature of God”. The dramatic decline in the numbers going to confession is one manifestation of this. And all efforts by Rome to make confession more attractive have failed.

One initiative seemed to be working. “From the mid-1970s, during the papacy of Paul VI, penitents were offered the option of group absolution — known as ‘general’ absolution; the initiative was quashed by John Paul II in 1983.”

In the second half of the 20th century, many Catholic writers recalled the trauma of confession in childhood. Cornwell cites Frank O’Connor’s short story, First Confession; Mary McCarthy’s Memoirs of a Catholic Girlhood; Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha; James Joyce’s Ulysses, and the novels of Edna O’Brien. The latter, he tells us, had been taught that a mere kiss was an “occasion of sin”. “Her account evokes an entire era of neurotic scrupulosity inflicted on generations of young Catholics.”

The publication of Humanae Vitae — Pope Paul VI’s anti-contraception encyclical — in July 1968 had a devastating effect on confession. An expectation had been created after the Second Vatican Council that a relaxation of papal condemnation of artificial contraception was on the way. This had been recommended by a majority of the members of the commission set up by Pope John XXIII. However, with the publication of Paul VI’s document, hopes of a change were dashed.

“After Humanae Vitae,” writes Cornwell, “two crucial tendencies occurred with important implications for confession.” The first was a “massive decline of confessional practice”, and Catholics who “simply abandoned their Catholicism in a process of self-exclusion, having decided that it was too difficult to live up to the Church’s sexual teachings”.

It was because he was acutely conscious of the wide-scale collapse of confessional practice, that Paul VI in 1973 announced a revision of the “Sacrament of Reconciliation”, as confession was now to be known. This provided for a communal service with general absolution.

At the 1983 Synod of Bishops in Rome, verbal and written submissions from bishops in different parts of the world stressed the pastoral advantages of general confession. “A year after the Synod, John Paul II issued an ‘apostolic exhortation’ ignoring the concerns raised by many of the bishops at the Synod.” The Polish Pope was wedded to the idea of private confession on a one-to-one basis.

It was Pope Pius X (1903-14) who extended universal and frequent confessional practice to young people, with the age of seven being cited as the stage at which a child attains the “age of discretion”.

Cornwell, who studied for the priesthood for a time, says that “ritualistic contrition” has antecedents in the Jewish Day of Atonement, but confession on a one-to-one basis as we know it today dates from the 12th century.

Confession, in private to a priest (auricular confession), by children as young as seven sets the stage, Cornwell contends, for “abusive encounters” in the dark box.

“The sexual exploitation of the confessional could be stealthy, devious, and long-term in the planning.” Given clerical secrecy and the reluctance on the part of Church authorities to cooperate with the police, abusers could go unchallenged.

“Criminal justice systems and Church authorities have failed to identify the link between confession and the access, opportunity, and special trauma of clerical abuse.”

In a broader context, the practice of confession has exerted a potent influence on the development of Western ethics and law.

If there is to be a way back for confession, it can only come with a restoration of general confession and absolution. Auricular confession has had its day, and the sooner the Catholic Church faces up to this the better for all concerned.