The Confessional and Ex-Catholic Priests in Nineteenth-Century Protestant America

Abstract

Auricular confession became a major source of contention between U.S. Catholics and Protestants in the nineteenth century. The theological battle over the sacrament of penance stemmed from the Protestant Reformation and, to some extent, reflected the theological pluralism of the pre-Council of Trent era with regard to the necessity of auricular confession and the meaning and form of absolution. In the nineteenth century, however, much of the Protestant polemic against auricular confession focused on the practice’s allegedly evil moral and social consequences. By the 1830s the confessional itself came to be seen as a den of sexual exploitation and perversion and a threat to husbands, the family, and the stability of American society. Several former Catholic priests took advantage of this polemical situation and became exponents of the obscene charges, making confession itself the key to understanding the believed Catholic perversion of Christianity. Their popular public lectures across the country and their widely-distributed publications on the subject appeared credible because of their prior experiences in the Catholic Church and their inner knowledge of confessional practices. These ex-priests, turned Protestant, reinforced the anti-Catholic, Protestant crusade that emphasized the Catholic tradition’s supposedly salacious elements.