The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession by John Cornwell


The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession
eBook The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession
By John Cornwell
ISBN 0465039952
ISBN-13 9780465039951
Publication 10 July 2025
Number of Pages 320
Format Type Hardcover

The black box denver

To minute examinations of the individual s soul throughout the Counter Reformation There are some fascinating insights into the role of Confessor in the lives both of ordinary Catholics and of noted holy mystics my personal favourite comment related to St Theresa of Avila being advised to get out when she confronted her new confessor with her latest round of hallucinatory visions. Science black box activity From here the book delves into the tightening of rules surrounding confession during the late 18th and early 19th century The focus is largely on the lowering of the age for first confession and on the impact that stern ideas of sin and a vengeful God had on generations of immature child Catholics The conditions and Rule of the Seminaries is examined.

The dark tower book box set

Not very interesting John Cornwell 3. The dark boxp pptx 5 stars a very interesting if somewhat erratic look at the state of Catholic confession The Dark Box is really three books a sometimes dull and wandering history of confessional practices a semi autobiographical account of twentieth century shifts in these practices and a fascinating and heartbreaking indictment of how these structures encouraged in Church sexual abuse These quasi connected threads of argument never really came together for me yet Cornwell s forceful and well researched points particularly his idea that the power dynamics and doublethink of confession lead to priestly abuse add much to the conversation among Catholics regarding the Church s future in a changing world John Cornwell This is one of those authors that I m not sure I can trust to appropriately handle nuanced or complicated histories Like a lot of social commentators he seems ironically obsessed with the Catholic Church s supposed obsession with masturbation the psychotherapeutic speculations were a bit much to swallow and overall it just felt like he had a lot of unresolved anger towards the Catholic Church that he was venting John Cornwell Father forgive me for I have sinned It has been two months since I started reading this book and I finally left it on a train for someone else to read I quit there was nothing of value here for me and I didn t make it very far before I just found it in my sidebag everyday as an option I was ignoring Not saying it isn t worthwhile but I obviously did not get that far John Cornwell Incredibly well written with a vast amount of information covering a huge expanse of time presented in an interesting and accessible way. The dark boxp pptx the author s own experiences of the Seminary provided a really interesting insight into that world John Cornwell Confession is a crucial ritual of the Catholic Church offering absolution of sin and spiritual guidance to the faithful Yet this ancient sacrament has also been a source of controversy and oppression culminating as prize winning historian John Cornwell reveals in The Dark Box with the scandal of clerical child abuse Drawing on extensive historical sources contemporary reports and first hand accounts Cornwell takes a hard look at the long evolution of confession The papacy made annual one on one confession obligatory for the first time in the 13th century In the era that followed confession was a source of spiritual consolation as well as sexual and mercenary scandal During the 16th century the Church introduced the confession box to prevent sexual solicitation of women but this private space gave rise to new forms of temptation both for penitents and confessors Yet no phase in the story of the sacrament has had such drastic consequences as a historic decree by Pope Pius X in 1910 In reaction to the spiritual perils of the new century Pius sought to safeguard the Catholic faithful by lowering the age at which children made their first confession from their early teens to seven while exhorting all Catholics to confess frequently instead of annually This sweeping inappropriately early imposition of the sacrament gave priests an unprecedented and privileged role in the lives of young boys and girls a role that a significant number would exploit in the decades that followed A much needed account of confession s fraught history The Dark Box explores the sources of the sacrament s harm and shame while recognizing its continuing power to offer consolation and reconciliation The Dark Box A Secret History of ConfessionThough it s not exclusively about abuse centered on the confessional it does bring up some of the good confession can provide when rightly done it nevertheless adds to my contention that the Catholic church does harm than good John Cornwell This book provides a thorough examination of the role of Confession in the history of the Catholic Church and of the Confessional in particular The preface lays out the bias of the author a cradle Catholic and ex seminarian who has had personal experience of the sacrament being abused He describes personal struggles with performing confession as a child and youth and very much sets the tone for the rest of the work. The dark boxp pptx The first section of the book gives a detailed and highly informative potted history of the role of confession in Christian history From communal out pouring of public guilt and shame during the middle ages with the strict removal of outside influences being seen as an insurmountable bar to future Confessors abilities to make sense of or deal with the actual world Pius X comes in for severe criticism throughout this section with both his methods and his motivation being questioned The final section of the book examines the abuses of the Confessional both of a sexual and of an emotional nature It is not clear if Cornwell feels that the Confessional acted to inhibit or promote sexual abuses during the mid 20th Century On one hand the separation from the congregation as a whole and genuine fear of the dark box comes into play but on the other the move away from using the confessional into personally private spaces is seen as an opportunity for predatory individuals to groom and abuse their victims The use of confession as a tool for reconciling the abusers to their own misdeeds is made clear while the shameful role of the administration and the Vatican offices in particular in making inappropriate use of the seal of confession is listed as a contributing factor in much of the abuse. Epub the dark box pdf download The author contacted many individuals from both the laity and from holy orders for their own experiences of confession There were a variety of views expressed everything from being brought back into the fold by a kindly worldly priest who was capable of giving good council to horrific stories of abused children being given penance for the acts that had just been forced upon them by their abusers The vast majority of the criticism against the form of Confession used during much of the 20th Century falls to the reforms of Pius X and in turn to the intransigent and unforgiving actions and pronouncements of his predecessors most notably John Paul II. The dark boxp pptx This is not a feel good book by any stretch of the imagination Most of the book is focused on the opportunities for abuse offered by the form this sacrament took following Pius X s reforms and there are some harrowing stories on abuse recounted However it is a comprehensive well researched look at the experience of confession for actual people John Cornwell Concise well written book about The Catholic Church and the evolution of confession Cornwell puts special emphasis on Pope Pius X and his 1910 decree that lowered the age of first confession from adolescence to age seven It was done to distance the faithful from the evils of modernity which the Pope saw all around him its disturbing legacy was that putting such young impressionable children into the hands of priests increased the opportunity for sexual abuse by those priests who were predatory The book details information provided by those who were abused as children none of this is new to anyone who has followed the church s sexual scandals of the last several decades One fact revelatory to me a non Catholic the fact that so many Catholics throughout the world have turned away from confession and rarely go John Cornwell Very well written and super useful information for anyone wanting to learn about the dark side of confession John Cornwell I can t rate this book appropriately when I bought it I thought I would find it really interesting unfortunately I found it extremely dull I couldn t finish it. Darkbox the legend I doubt I ll ever revisit it either John Cornwell

The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession By John Cornwell
0465039952
9780465039951
English
320
Hardcover
the dark box book
the black box
the black box book
the black box denver
the black box co
the black box belfast
the black box villa
the black box book marquette
the black box book marquette pdf
the black box book henry louis gates
the black box book summary
the black box book review
the black book box office
inside the black box book
book the black box
The Dark Box: A Secret History of ConfessionJohn Cornwell is a British journalist author and academic Since 1990 he has directed the Science and Human Dimension Project at Jesus College Cambridge where he is also since 2009 Founder and Director of the Rustat Conferences He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters University of Leicester in 2011 He was nominated for the PEN Ackerley Prize for best UK memoir 2007 Seminary Boy and shortlisted Specialist Journalist of the Year science medicine in Sunday Times Magazine British Press Awards 2006 He won the Scientific and Medical Network Book of the Year Award for Hitlers Scientists 2005 and received the Independent Television Authority Tablet Award for contributi John Cornwell is a British journalist author and academic Since 1990 he has directed the Science and Human Dimension Project at Jesus College Cambridge where he is also since 2009 Founder and Director of the Rustat Conferences He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters University of Leicester in 2011 He was nominated for the PEN Ackerley Prize for best UK memoir 2007 Seminary Boy and shortlisted Specialist Journalist of the Year science medicine in Sunday Times Magazine British Press Awards 2006 He won the Scientific and Medical Network Book of the Year Award for Hitler s Scientists 2005 and received the Independent Television Authority Tablet Award for contributions to religious journalism 1994 In 1982 he won the Gold Dagger Award Non Fiction 1982 for Earth to Earth He is best known for his investigative journalism memoir and his work in public understanding of science In addition to his books on the relationship between science ethics and the humanities he has written widely on the Catholic Church and the modern papacy site_link.

. Kindle dark screen It presents how the role of confession has changed within the church the impact it has had one priests and believers alike and inevitably the abuse, Inside the black box ebook saying I enjoyed this is probably the wrong word but it was very interesting and hard to put down