Qui s’accuse, s’excuse

Terry Eagleton

  • Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature by Peter Brooks
    Chicago, 207 pp, £17.00, May 2000, ISBN 0 226 07585 0

In the wake of the Second Vatican Council, some progressively minded Catholics began to reintroduce into the Mass the ancient practice of public confession. Individuals would rise from their pews and accuse themselves in comfortably imprecise terms of various moral lapses, begging forgiveness of their brethren. At one such Mass, a young woman rose and proclaimed to the piously suppressed excitement of the congregation that she had committed adultery. ‘With that man over there,’ she added, pointing a finger at a young man with a baby on his lap who was turning a slow crimson. Then she added, ‘In thought,’ and sat down again.

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