For I Have Sinned

The remarkable story of how confession became a defining rite for American Catholicsand 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 Gods 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. OToole reconstructs the history of confessions steady riseand dramatic fallamong American Catholics. In the early United States, the Catholic Church grew rapidlyand with it, confessions 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, OToole reveals, include the emergence of psychology and other forms of counseling; the Churchs stance against contraception, which alienated many parishioners; and a growing sense of confessions 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.