The Dark Box : A Secret History of Confession

A bestselling journalist exposes the connection between the Catholic Churchs sexual abuse crisis and the practice of confession. Cornwell was raised Catholic and began studying for the priesthood at an early age. While in seminary, a priest attempted to seduce him during confession. Although Cornwell subsequently left the church, he occasionally wonders whether his journey masks a search for the lost abusers of ones childhood. Read as a personal odyssey, his book is quite interesting. Cornwell is less successful proving in any rigorous historical or social-scientific manner his provocative claim that the churchs 1910 decision to lower the age for confession from 14 to 7, and increase its frequency, eventually resulted in the sex-abuse scandal that plagues the church today. That said, he asks important questions about confessions potential to inflict lasting psychological damage on children with the concept of sin and evil, especially as they concern ones physical body and natural urges, and the requirement to confess transgressions are introduced at too early an age. Cornwells book also underscores the sad fact that some priests used the cover of the confessional for their evil purposes. A bestselling journalist exposes the connection between the Catholic Church's sexual abuse crisis and the practice of confession. Confession is a crucial ritual of the Catholic Church, offering absolution of sin and spiritual guidance to the faithful. Yet this ancient sacrament has also been a source of controversy and oppression, culminating, as prize-winning historian John Cornwell reveals in The Dark Box, with the scandal of clerical child abuse. Drawing on extensive historical sources, contemporary reports, and first-hand accounts, Cornwell takes a hard look at the long evolution of confession. The papacy made annual, one-on-one confession obligatory for the first time in the 13th century. In the era that followed, confession was a source of spiritual consolation as well as sexual and mercenary scandal. During the 16th century, the Church introduced the confession box to prevent sexual solicitation of women, but this private space gave rise to new forms of temptation, both for penitents and confessors. Yet no phase in the story of the sacrament has had such drastic consequences as a historic decree by Pope Pius X in 1910. In reaction to the spiritual perils of the new century, Pius sought to safeguard the Catholic faithful by lowering the age at which children made their first confession from their early teens to seven, while exhorting all Catholics to confess frequently instead of annually. This sweeping, inappropriately early imposition of the sacrament gave priests an unprecedented and privileged role in the lives of young boys and girls -- a role that a significant number would exploit in the decades that followed. A much-needed account of confession's fraught history, The Dark Box explores the sources of the sacrament's harm and shame, while recognizing its continuing power to offer consolation and reconciliation. - Publisher