There were actually quite a few ways confessions could be heard, even without exceptions (as such) to the law. When I write about “the law” I’m writing about this specific topic, which is about confessionals. Confessionals were (and still are!) required to have a screen.
The innovation part is that confessionals were either modified to force face-to-face or removed altogether. Granted, the practice is not new in the sense of never-before-done, but still, denying the faithful the opportunity for anonymous confession (after so many centuries) represents a true rupture from the existing practice. So while the word innovation might or might not be the best choice of words, there’s no doubt that we experienced a break/fracture/rupture, and an abrupt one at that.
Father, first if you are going to speak about the law, you should at least kindly reference the law, please, so that people are not misled. To wit, from the 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code:
Can 910 §1. Feminarum confessiones extra sedem confessionalem ne audiantur, nisi ex causa infirmitatis aliave verae necessitatis et adhibitis cautelis quas Ordinarius loci opportunas iudicaverit.
** §2. Confessiones virorum etiam in aedibus privatis excipere licet.**
Thus those of us who were men ALWAYS had, by paragraph 2, the prerogative of confessing face to face and away from the confessional – as I did many times having both lived and studied under the old code. I say always…I am not so old that I was confessing before the 1917 code went into effect.
The confession of women outside of the confessional, on the other hand, was to be for “verae necessitatis” (understood according to the canonical usage) and had to account for the precautions prescribed by the local Ordinary.
Our confessionals in Europe – which I find vastly superior to the walk in closets that I had to contend with during my sojourns in the United States – readily admitted of face-to-face confession without the need for modification.
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We simply went up to the confessional, knocked on the opening to the confessor’s compartment, which he opened, and confessed standing or kneeling. I should know. This is something I did routinely in my younger days.
It is not as elaborate as an American priest seems to conjure in his mind…by the position I took outside the confessional, it told the next penitent that I was going face to face and so they waited to afford me privacy. It was actually quite simple.
I cannot imagine this was possible with the confessionals I saw in the United States…but it is really not very nice to tell an audience that includes Europeans what our lived experience in Europe was.
Next, let us clear up another incorrect point. The fixed screen was usually normally in Europe never so opaque that confessor and penitent could not see each other for complete and total anonymity…although some places did use simply a cloth, which was opaque.
While I found the sense that the screen needed to completely conceal confessor and penitent to be more the case with the Americans – who seem to have some issues that border on obsession in this matter, frankly – in Europe, our screens can (and in the days of my youth, could) normally be seen through. Of course, the person can turn their gaze and we who are hearing, in turn, are obviously sitting sideways.
I never took a photo of any of my confessionals but this image from Tradition in Action faithfully represents the level of opaqueness in a number of confessionals where I have heard. Others were like sheets of tin with multiple perforation of small holes that allowed the voice to pass and also, frankly, to be seen through.
Finally, there is yet another point that needs to be disabused from the perspective of a European priest.
The artist Babochka posted, Roehne, and his painting, should not at all be compared to the painting of the Guardian Angel, which is a fanciful depiction. Roehne was an artist born in the aftermath of the French revolution. What he depicts in this painting is quite accurate to the situation as it was during the French revolution, with priests giving the sacrament of penance, just as being depicted in this scene. Indeed, the young lady could quite easily be one of the myriad of women religious who had to adopt lay garb after being evicted from their convents as they awaited and hoped for both the restoration of their religious life…and not to be executed by the regime.
While it might not have been common in the Latin Church for centuries, it is certainly not an innovation.
