The Egyptians, for example, saw themselves as mortal human beings containing the seed of the divine. When Wilkes looks at the concept of admitting wrongdoing in mankind’s earliest days, the book gets on somewhat shaky ground as Wilkes supposes that confession had its beginnings with humans living in caves asking forgiveness of one another in order to avoid tearing the fragile (especially at that time) social fabric.īut the narrative picks up when Wilkes looks at the history of morality among the ancients. Unfortunately, when this sacrament went out the window, so did the notion of personal responsibility for wrongdoing - which, as Wilkes sees it, is one of the problems with the present day. But how many people could make such promises in all honesty? Then with the emphasis on situational ethics and psychoanalysis, confession seemed an even less valid concept.
Absolution became (as LaBaire calls it) a “magical incantation.” Even worse, Catholics were made to promise that they would sin no more. You miss Mass once and you go to hell?” In addition, people didn’t like to report a laundry list of offenses, especially when sins were more complicated than that. Steven LaBaire (one of Wilkes’ experts) says that confession didn’t “make sense. As Wilkes notes, in 1965, “nearly 40 percent of Catholics went to confession monthly today the number is 2 percent.” Yet confession was never one of the more popular seven sacraments.įr. One learns early on that after the Second Vatican Council underscored the primacy of the individual’s conscience, confession went out of style. His treatment of the sacrament of reconciliation is especially interesting. Their essays are meant to exemplify and add insight to the topic at hand, and generally they succeed, although, coming as they do in the middle of the text, they are sometimes distracting.īut to be fair, Wilkes makes many valid points. Wilkes also peppers his pages with lengthy quotes - more like brief essays - from four experts: a rabbi, a priest, a psychologist, and a nun who manages a self-help bookstore. Then there’s Wilkes’ remembrance of adolescence and the problem of confessing sins of the flesh while promising to sin no more and avoid the near occasions of sin - with testosterone coursing through his body. There’s the discussion of his boyhood in Roman Catholic elementary school when every week Wilkes entered the confessional booth to measure his life by the Ten Commandments - a topic sure to resonate with Catholics of a certain age. If the writing seems in danger of becoming too philosophical, which it often does, Wilkes rises to the occasion with a refreshing personal anecdote. Wilkes’ work contains a little of everything: from admitting wrongdoing in ancient times to establishing and reestablishing one’s relationship with God in the Old Testament to early Christian notions of repentance to the Third Lateran Council (12th century), which regularized the sacrament of confession to contemporary adulterous politicians who tell all, apologize profusely, but aren’t really sorry to therapeutic discussions of one’s interior life to “praying backward” as a way to understand oneself while connecting with the Divine.Ī bestselling author and journalist ( The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic) Wilkes has a very personable and reader-friendly style. Blending history, memoir, psychology, philosophy, theology, sociology and self-help advice, Wilkes offers a kaleidoscopic presentation of confession with, as he says, a small “c.” Touching on the many facets of confessing, Paul Wilkes seeks to redefine the subject.Īlthough he discusses the sacrament of reconciliation, this isn’t a particularly Roman Catholic book or even an especially religious book. THE ART OF CONFESSION: RENEWING YOURSELF THROUGH THE PRACTICE OF HONESTY
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