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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Nigel Yates
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Extract

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.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , April 1988 , pp. 202 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

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5 This paper had its origins in a communication on ‘Popular opposition to auricular confession in Victorian England’, read to a conference of the Commission Internationale d'Histoire Eccle'siastique Comparee at the University of Durham in September 1981. It has been revised and extended since then, and I am grateful to all those who have participated in this process especially the Revd Dr William Jacob and Dr David Hilliard, with whom I have discussed several of the issues considered.

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