A look back at confession

Catholic confession’s steep price - Ideas - The Boston Globe

John Cornwall has written a book about the changing nature of the Catholic sacrament  of confession penance/reconciliation, and this article provides quite a few important details about confession of which I was unaware.  (Even though I don't know that Cornwall is always to be trusted, I take it he is not making up the basic historical points here.)

It is certainly true that confession is ignored by most Catholics these days.  It is a dramatic change from what it meant to be Catholic even in the 1960's.  And you know what - the parish priests seem hardly concerned at all.   I have rarely heard this dramatic change in practice as the subject of a sermon, for example.

I tend to blame its downfall on the widespread rejection of the Church's teaching on the Pill, but the societal changes in the views of sexuality more generally no doubt played a role too.