The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession

by John Cornwell

  14. For transgressions of priests in Italy on the eve of the Reformation, see Mary Laven, Virgins of Venice: Enclosed Lives and Broken Vows in the Renaissance Convent (London, 2003). For the other examples in this paragraph, see Wietse de Boer, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and the Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan (Leiden, 2001), 30.

  15. De Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 18–19.

  16. Peter Ackroyd, The History of England, vol. 2 (London, 2012), 26.

  17. See Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional, 12.

  18. Taylor, Culture of Confession, 63ff.

  19. See, for example, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven, CT, 1996), 161–162.

  Three: Confession and the Counter-Reformers

  1. For a fresh overview of the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation, see Mary Laven, ‘Introduction’, in Alexandra Bamji, Geert H. Janssen, and Mary Laven, eds., The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation (Surrey, UK, 2013).

  2. H. Daniel-Rops, History of the Church of Christ, vol. 5, The Catholic Reformation, trans. John Warrington (London, 1962), 80; Hubert Jedin, A History of the Council of Trent, trans. Dom Ernest Graf, vol. 2 (St. Louis, 1961), 26; John W. O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA, 2013), 107.

  3. Wietse de Boer, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan (Leiden, 2001), 39.

  4. W. David Myers, ‘Poor, Sinning Folk’: Confession and Conscience in Counter Reformation Germany (London, 1996), 117–119.

  5. Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England Under Mary Tudor (New Haven, CT, 2010), 15.

  6. Ibid., 132–133.

  7. P. D. Stenger, ‘Treasonous Reconciliations: Robert Southwell, Religious Polemic, and the Criminalisation of Confession’, Reformation 16 (2011): 5.35.

  8. De Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 43.

  9. David Hugh Farmer, Oxford Dictionary of the Saints (Oxford, 1987), 55.

  10. De Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 5.

  11. Ibid., 14.

  12. Avertenze di monsignore illustrissime cardinale Borromeo, arcivescovo di Milano, a I Confessori della citt’a, et diocese sua), in Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis, vol. 2 (Milan, 1890–1896), cited De Boer, Conquest of the Soul, xix.

  13. Stephen Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional: A Sacrament Profaned (Oxford, 1996), 100.

  14. Ibid., 99.

  15. De Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 86ff.

  16. See John Bossy, ‘The Social History of Confession’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 25 (1975): 30; John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1985), 45–50, 127ff.

  17. Swift writes of the benefits to be received ‘either by eructation, or expiration, or evomition’ in the ‘whispering office’. Jonathan Swift, Selected Works, vol. 1 (London, 1823), 96–97. Cardinal Thomas Cajetan is quoted in De Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 101. The quotation from the provost of Santa Fedele is in De Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 122.

  18. Mary Laven, Virgins of Venice: Enclosed Lives and Broken Vows in the Renaissance Convent (London, 2003), 173.

  19. Alonso de Andrade, Libro de guía de la virtud y de la imitación de Neustra Señora (A Guide in the Virtue and Imitation of Our Lady), is cited in Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional, 89–90. Ippolito Capilupi is quoted in Laven, Virgins of Venice, 162.

  20. The account of Fra Gaspar de Nájera is in Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional, 99; the account of Fra Antonio de Arvelo is in the same work on pp. 99–100.

  21. Ibid., 102.

  22. Ibid., 103.

  23. Ibid., 169.

  24. For the story of the Piarist Congregation that was responsible for educating thousands of children over four centuries, see Karen Liebreich, Fallen Order: A History (London, 2004). For the account of Father Stefano Cherubini, see p. 71 of the same work.

  25. Judith C. Brown, Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (Oxford, 1986), 14.

  26. Ibid., 17–18, 19.

  27. For comparative estimates of regional and pan-European prosecutions and executions, see Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 2nd ed. (London, 1995), 21–26.

  28. For Alonso de Salazar, see Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional, 89, 220n20. Piero Camporesi’s account and the quotation by Girolamo Cardano are in Bread of Dreams, trans. David Gentilcore (Cambridge, 1989), 125. On Joseph of Cupertino, see John Cornwell, Powers of Darkness, Powers of Light (London, 1991), 292–303.

  29. See Friedrich Spee, Cautio Criminalis: Or, Book on Witch Trials, trans. Marcus Hellyer (Charlottesville, VA, 2003). The introduction contains biographical details of Spee’s life.

  30. Biographies of Teresa of Avila of note include Rowan Williams, Teresa of Avila (London, 2004); Vita Sackville-West, The Eagle and the Dove (London, 1943); and Stephen Clissold, St. Teresa of Avila (London, 1979).

  31. Clissold, St. Teresa of Avila, 51.

  32. Ibid., 100.

  33. See Rudolph M. Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago, 1985). For Urban VIII, see his p. 151; for Benedict XIV, see pp. 160–161.

  Four: Fact, Fiction, and Anticlericalism

  1. Alphonsus Liguori, The Way of Salvation and of Perfection (New York, 1926 [1767]), 451.

  2. See Chapter 1, ‘The Influence of Auricular Confession’, in John Mahoney The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford, 1987).

  3. Ibid., 33–34.

  4. For overviews of Jansenism in English, see Owen Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution (Cambridge, 1980), 573ff; Owen Chadwick, From Bossuet to Newman (Cambridge, 1987), 57ff; also, in Italian, L. Vereccke, Storia della teologia morale moderna, vol. 3 (Rome, 1979–1980).

  5. For the vexed debates between probabilism and probabiliorism, see Mahoney Making of Moral Theology, 134–143.

  6. Ibid., 142–143; Frederick M. Jones, ed., Alphonsus de Liguori: Selected Writings (New York, 1999), esp. 209–214.

  7. Anthony Gavin, The Great Red Dragon, Or, The Master-Key to Popery (Boston, 1854), 70.

  8. Quoted in Meriol Trevor, Newman: The Pillar of the Cloud (London, 1962), 352.

  9. Stephen Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional: A Sacrament Profaned (Oxford, 1996), 186.

  10. Richard Hofstadter, ‘Paranoid Style in American Politics’, Harper’s Magazine, November 1964.

  11. Charles Stephen Dessain, et al., eds., The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman (Oxford, 1961–2008), xiv, 110.

  12. John Henry Newman, Lectures on Catholicism in England (Birmingham, UK, 1851), 43.

  13. Ibid., xv, 280.

  14. Among the many hagiographical lives of Jean Vianney in English, the most informative is John Oxenham, A Saint in the Making: From the Valley of the Singing Blackbird to St. Peter’s, Rome (London, 1931).

  Five: The Pope Who ‘Restored’ Catholicism

  1. For the life and papacy of Pius X, see Hieronymo Dal-Gal, Pius X: The Life-Story of the Beatus, trans. Thomas F Murray (Dublin, 1953); G. Romanato, Pio X: La vita di papa Sarto (Milan, 1992), based on the deposition for canonization; Carlo Falconi, The Popes in the Twentieth Century from Pius X to John XXIII, trans. Muriel Grindrod (London, 1967), 1ff; Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (New Haven, CT, 1997), 245ff; Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 1830–1914 (Oxford, 1998), 332ff.

  2. Dal-Gal, Pius X, 111.

  3. Duffy, Saints and Sinners, 245.

  4. The Society of Pius X, SSPX, was founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre of France. The group defended the right to say the Tridentine Mass and laments the loss of traditions that flourished before the Second Vatican Council.

  5. Chadwick, History of the Popes, 344. Chadwick wrote: ‘As he grew older, or more used to power, the authoritarian streak in him grew also, [and] he found it harder to bear contradiction.’

  6. E Supremi, Encyclical of Pope Pius X on the Restoration of All Things in Christ to the Patriarchs, Primates, Archb
ishops, Bishops, and Other Ordinaries in Peace and Communion with the Apostolic See, 4 October 1903, www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_x/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_04101903_e-supremi_en.html.

  7. Quoted in Falconi, Popes in the Twentieth Century, 14.

  8. Quoted in ibid.

  9. Pieni L’Animo, Encyclical of Pope Pius X on the Clergy in Italy to the Venerable Bretheren, the Archbishops, and Bishops of Italy, 28 July 1906, www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_x/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_28071906_pieni-l’animo_en.html.

  10. Georges Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest, trans. Pamela Morris (New York, 2002), 73.

  11. On Modernism, see Nicholas Lash, ‘Modernism, aggiornamento and the night battle’, in Adrian Hastings, ed., Bishops and Writers (Cambridge, 1977), 51ff. The Leo XIII quotations are in G. Fogarty The Vatican and the American Hierarchy from 1870 to 1965 (Wilmington, DE, 1985), 178.

  12. Falconi, Popes in the Twentieth Century, 54.

  Six: Pius X’s Spy-Net

  1. For a detailed history of the Anti-Modernist campaign, see Émile Poulat, Intégrisme et catholicisme intégral (Paris, 1969).

  2. Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 1830–1914 (Oxford, 1998).

  3. For the range of Benigni’s clandestine activities, see David Alvarez, Spies in the Vatican: Espionage and Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust (Lawrence, KS, 2002), 80ff; see also Émile Poulat, Histoire dogme et critique dans la crise moderniste: Suivi de La réflexion d’Alphonse Dupront (Paris, 1996 [1962]).

  4. Peter Hebblethwaite, John XXIII (London, 1994), 74.

  5. The oath was promulgated on 1 September 1910. The full text is available on several websites, including, for example, ‘The Oath Against Modernism’, Papal Encyclicals Online, www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10moath.htm. The oath includes: ‘I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. . . . Likewise, I reject that method of judging and interpreting Sacred Scripture which, departing from the tradition of the Church, the analogy of faith, and the norms of the Apostolic See, embraces the misrepresentations of the rationalists and with no prudence or restraint adopts textual criticism as the one and supreme norm. . . . Finally, I declare that I am completely opposed to the error of the modernists who hold that there is nothing divine in sacred tradition. . . . I firmly hold, then, and shall hold to my dying breath the belief of the Fathers in the charism of truth, which certainly is, was, and always will be in the succession of the episcopacy from the apostles. The purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way. . . . I promise that I shall keep all these articles faithfully, entirely, and sincerely, and guard them inviolate, in no way deviating from them in teaching or in any way in word or in writing. . . . Thus I promise, this I swear, so help me God. . . .’ On the implications of the Anti-Modernist oath, see, for example, Paul Collins, Papal Power: A Proposal for Change in Catholicism’s Third Millennium (London, 1997), 66–67.

  6. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (London, 1949), 32.

  7. Codex Juris Canonici PII X Pontificis (Vatican City, 1917); the pocket edition runs to 890 pages.

  8. U. Stutz, Der Geist des Codex Juris Canonici (Stuttgart, 1918), 50.

  9. Codex Juris Canonici, canons 1323, 1324. In the standard edition of the Code of Canon Law that would remain in use until 1983, there was a clarification: ‘Such are all doctrinal decrees of the Holy See, even though they be not infallibly proposed, and even though they come from the Sacred Congregations with the approval of the Holy Father, or from the Biblical Commission. . . . Such decrees do not receive the assent of faith; they are not de fide catholica. But they merit genuine internal and intellectual consent and loyal obedience.’

  10. Codex Juris Canonici, canons 1325, 246, 1386.

  Seven: The Great Confessional Experiment

  1. Pope St. Pius X, Sacra Tridentina (On Frequent and Daily Reception of Holy Communion), 20 December 1905, Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/CDWFREQ.HTM.

  2. See Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 1830–1914 (Oxford, 1998), 361ff. Chadwick notes, ‘Historians, in hindsight, if asked which act of which pope did most to affect the Church since 1800, would put their finger on this change of 1905–6, the encouragement of frequent, even daily communion, and receiving of it by children’ (p. 362). On the Quam Singulari, see www.papalencyclicals.net/Piuslo/ploquam.htm

  3. See Henry Charles Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, vol. 1 (London, 1896), 400ff.

  4. Ibid., 400.

  5. Catechism of Christian Doctrine (‘Penny Catechism’) taught in many English-speaking countries, originally published in 1889.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Peter Occhiogrosso, ed., Once a Catholic: Prominent Catholics and Ex-Catholics Reveal the Influence of the Church on Their Lives and Work (Boston, 1987), 236.

  8. Frank O’Connor, ‘First Confession’, in The Cornet Player Who Betrayed Ireland (London, 2005), 17.

  9. Mary McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (New York, 1957).

  10. Anthony Burgess, Little Wilson and Big God (London, 1987), 45.

  11. Tobias Wolff, This Boy’s Life (London, 1989), 17ff.

  12. Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (London, 1993), 84.

  13. Occhiogrosso, ed., Once a Catholic, 295.

  14. Antonia White, Frost in May (London, 1978), 134.

  15. Neil McKenty, The Inside Story (Quebec, 1997), 21.

  16. O’Connor, ‘First Confession’, 19.

  17. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (London, 1998), 20. Foucault wrote: ‘An imperative was established: Not only will you confess to acts contravening the law, but you will seek to transform your desire, your every desire, into discourse.’ The quotation from Molly Bloom is in James Joyce, Ulysses, ed. Hans Walter Gabler (London, 1986 [1922]), 610.

  18. Margaret Hebblethwaite, ‘Gift of Faith’, in Monica Furlong, ed., Our Childhood’s Pattern: Memories of Growing Up Christian (London, 1995), 37.

  19. Bel Mooney, ed., Devout Sceptics: Conversations on Faith and Doubt (London, 2003), 90.

  20. See my article in The Tablet on 18 August 2012 entitled ‘Where Are the Penitents?’ at www.thetablet.co.uk/article/163100.

  Eight: The Making of a Confessor

  1. Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (London, 1982), 11.

  2. For a wide range of statistics in the United States and worldwide, see the publications at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University, http://cara.georgetown.edu/Publications/Publications.html; see also the website of UK Priest, http://ukpriest.org/resources-and-events/statistics.

  3. Pope John XXIII, Veterum Sapientia (On the Promotion of the Study of Latin), Apostolic Constitution, 22 February 1962, Papal Encyclicals Online, www.papalencyclicals.net/John23/j23veterum.htm.

  4. H. Davis, SJ, Moral and Pastoral Theology, 4 vols. (London, 1943), 2:235.

  5. Ibid., 3:212ff.

  6. Ibid., 3:215.

  7. Ibid., 2:436.

  Nine: Seminary Sexology

  1. H. Davis, SJ, Moral and Pastoral Theology, 4 vols. (London, 1943), 2:200.

  2. Ibid., 2:205.

  3. Ibid., 2:204.

  4. Ibid., 2:229.

  5. Ibid., 2:230–231.

  6. Ibid., 2:295.

  7. Ibid., 2:234.

  8. Ibid., 2:243.

  9. Ibid., 2:24.

  10. A. W. Richard Sipe, A Secret World: Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy (New York, 1990), 139.

  11. Michael Haneke’s film White Ribbon (2009), which depicts a rural village in Germany on the eve of the Fir
st World War, portrays a Lutheran pastor father who quizzes his son on the subject of self-abuse and compels him to sleep with his hands tied at night. Critics of the movie have commented that the pastor’s treatment of his children is typical of Schreber’s recommendations. Haneke appears to be suggesting that this pedagogic terrorism was a prelude to the authoritarian spirit that would sweep Germany in subsequent decades, erupting into two world wars.

  12. Stephen Heath, The Sexual Fix (London, 1982), 22; Morton Schatzman, Soul Murder: Persecution in the Family (London, 1973), 105.

  13. Pope Pius X, Haerent Animo (To the Catholic Clergy on Priestly Sanctity), Apostolic Exhortation, 4 August 1908, Papal Encyclicals Online, www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10haer.htm.

  14. Sipe, Secret World, 142.

  15. On the wide-ranging practice of masturbation in the Catholic priesthood and its consequences, see ibid., 139–158.

  16. Ibid., 143.

  17. The term is from the Greek. Several spellings are used in English, including ‘epiky’ (Oxford English Dictionary) and ‘epicheia’.

  18. Davis, Moral and Pastoral Theology, 1:187.

  19. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, S 1.2, Q. 96, a.6, c.

  20. Interview in London with Dr. Josephine Klein, 14 August 2012.

  21. Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis (Oxford, 1996), esp. Chapter 7, ‘Pedophilia and Child Abuse’; John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, ‘The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, 1950–2002’ (John Jay Report), commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, based on surveys completed by the Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States. The initial version of the report was posted on the Internet on 27 February 2004, with corrections and revisions posted on 16 April. The printed version was published in June 2004. See PDF at www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/child-and-youth-protection/upload/The-Nature-and-Scope-of-Sexual-Abuse-of-Minors-by-Catholic-Priests-and-Deacons-in-the-United-States-1950-2002.pdf.

  Ten: Sexual Abuse in the Confessional

  1. Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation (New York, 1989); Morton Schatzman, Soul Murder: Persecution in the Family (London, 1973); A. W. Richard Sipe, ‘Loss of Faith’, 10 December 2002, Sipe Comments, www.awrsipe.com/Comments/2002-12-10-Loss_of_Faith.htm.