Harvard University Press
For I Have Sinned
About this book
The remarkable story of how confession became a defining rite for American Catholics—and then, beginning in the 1970s, all but disappeared.
For generations, American Catholics went faithfully to confession, admitting their sins to a priest and accepting through him God’s forgiveness. The sacrament served as a distinctive marker of Catholic identity, shaping parishioners’ views of their relationship to God, their neighbors, and the wider world. But starting in the 1970s, many abandoned confession altogether. Focusing on the experiences of both laypeople and priests, James M. O’Toole reconstructs the history of confession’s steady rise—and dramatic fall—among American Catholics.
In the early United States, the Catholic Church grew rapidly—and with it, confession’s centrality. Although the sacrament was practiced unevenly for much of the nineteenth century, frequent confession became common by the early twentieth. Both priests and parishioners understood confession as a ritual crucial for the soul, while on a social level, it established Catholic distinctiveness within a largely Protestant country. Today, however, even faithful Catholics seldom confess. The reasons for this change, O’Toole reveals, include the emergence of psychology and other forms of counseling; the Church’s stance against contraception, which alienated many parishioners; and a growing sense of confession’s inability to confront social problems like structural racism, poverty, and sexism. Meanwhile, increasing recognition of sexual abuse within the Church further undermined trust in clergy as confessors.
Sensitively attuned to the historical importance of confession, For I Have Sinned also suggests that, if the sacrament no longer serves the needs of US Catholics, the Church and its members might find new ways to express their ideals in the twenty-first century.
Reviews
-- John J. Miller Wall Street Journal
-- Matthew Schmitz Arc
-- Bernard Prusak Commonweal
-- James P. McCartin American Catholic Studies
-- Amanda Ray Library Journal
-- Nicholas Tomaino Washington Free Beacon
-- John T. McGreevy, author of Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis
-- Leslie Woodcock Tentler, author of American Catholics: A History
-- Jon Butler, author of God in Gotham: The Miracle of Religion in Modern Manhattan
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Introduction
1 -
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Introduction
14 -
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2 Sin
46 -
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3 Confessing
75 -
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4 Experience
106 -
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5 Secrecy
146 -
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6 Psychology
175 -
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7 Collapse
204 -
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8 Revelations
242 -
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Conclusion
263 -
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Abbreviations
279 -
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Notes
281 -
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Acknowledgments
319 -
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Index
323
