‘Jesuits in Disguise’? Ritualist Confessors and their Critics in the 1870s

Abstract

The public controversy over ritualism in the Church of England reached its peak in the 1870s, with the passing of the Public Worship Regulation Act and the attempts, eventually abandoned through use of the episcopal veto, to prosecute ritualist clergy for the use of technically illegal ceremonial ornaments or vestments. One other related subject that caused a similar degree of controversy at the time, though it has been less well remembered since, was the emphasis within ritualist circles on auricular or sacramental confession. The subject of auricular confession, made privately to a priest, was one of the most explosive religious issues, both morally and theologically, of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.