The Dark Box: a Secret History of Confession
“. . . Until now, the state of mortal sin seemed unimaginable . . .
—Colm Tóibín, The Heather Blazing THE DARK BOX IS STILL TO BE SEEN IN USE IN CATHEDRALS and large city churches, where penitents continue to wait their turn in the pews. These are Catholics who still find spiritual consolation whispering their sins into the ear of the shadowy priest beyond a screen of anonymity. As we have seen, in 2011 Pope Benedict XVI advocated a return to confession, as of old. Yet in countless lesser church...es where the box has not been broken up for firewood, church janitors have found the hidden space useful as a storage closet for vacuum cleaners, brooms, and cleaning products. The dwindling numbers of priests could never bring back the ‘old days’, even if there was a renewed appetite on the part of Catholics to confess weekly. Yet the dark box continues to live in the memories of the generations born before the early 1970s.
The box also lives on, as in its heyday, in literature and film, persisting in an enduring radioactive half-life of the popular imagination.MoreLess
—Colm Tóibín, The Heather Blazing THE DARK BOX IS STILL TO BE SEEN IN USE IN CATHEDRALS and large city churches, where penitents continue to wait their turn in the pews. These are Catholics who still find spiritual consolation whispering their sins into the ear of the shadowy priest beyond a screen of anonymity. As we have seen, in 2011 Pope Benedict XVI advocated a return to confession, as of old. Yet in countless lesser church...es where the box has not been broken up for firewood, church janitors have found the hidden space useful as a storage closet for vacuum cleaners, brooms, and cleaning products. The dwindling numbers of priests could never bring back the ‘old days’, even if there was a renewed appetite on the part of Catholics to confess weekly. Yet the dark box continues to live in the memories of the generations born before the early 1970s.
The box also lives on, as in its heyday, in literature and film, persisting in an enduring radioactive half-life of the popular imagination.MoreLess
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