For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America聽
Panel Discussion Participants
M. Cathleen Kaveny
Boston College
James Keenan, S.J.
Boston College
James O'Toole
Boston College
Leslie Tentler
Catholic University of America
Moderated by Mark Massa, S.J.
Date:聽Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Time:聽5:30 - 7pm
Location:聽Devlin 101聽聽
Co-sponsored with
聽AV研究所 Bookstore will be on site selling copies of this book.
For I Have Sinned聽presents a social history of the practice of confession by American Catholics. For generations, Catholics in the聽United States went to confession regularly and in large numbers. It was something they did which their Protestant and other American neighbors did not do, and so it became a distinctive denominational marker for them. They did not like to do it, but they did it anyway in compliance with the Church's expectations. Then, starting in the 1960s and 1970s, the practice all but disappeared. Even those who continued to identify as practicing Catholics stopped going to confession, and parishes everywhere drastically curtailed the hours when priests were available for this purpose. The book explores the reasons for this dramatic change, reasons that came from within the Church and from society at large. The book also examines the聽role of clergy sexual abuse in the decline of confession and in discouraging any revival of the practice.
M. Cathleen Kaveny聽is a scholar who focuses on the relationship of law, religion, and morality, serves as the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor at Boston College, a position that includes appointments in both the department of theology and the law school. She is the first faculty member to hold such a joint appointment. A member of the Massachusetts Bar, Kaveny clerked for the Honorable John T. Noonan Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and worked as an associate at the Boston law firm of Ropes & Gray in its health law group. She was the 2018-2019 Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress. Kaveny has published four books and over a hundred articles and essays, in journals and books specializing in law, ethics, and medical ethics. She serves on the masthead of聽Commonweal聽as a regular columnist. Her books include聽Law鈥檚 Virtues: Fostering Autonomy and Solidarity in American Society聽(Georgetown University Press, 2012);聽A Culture of Engagement: Law, Religion, and Morality聽(Georgetown University Press, 2016);聽Prophecy without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square聽(Harvard University Press, 2016); and聽Ethics at the Edges of Law: Christian Moralists and American Legal Thought聽(Oxford University Press, 2018). Kaveny regularly teaches contract law to first-year law students. She also teaches a number of seminars which explore the relationship between theology, philosophy, and law, such as 鈥淔aith, Morality, and Law,鈥� 鈥淢ercy and Justice,鈥� and 鈥淐omplicity.鈥� Kaveny is the chair of the board of trustees of the聽Journal of Religious Ethics.听She has been the president of the Society of Christian Ethics, the major professional society for scholars of Christian ethics and moral theology in North America. It meets annually in conjunction with the Society of Jewish Ethics and the Society for the Study of Muslim Ethics. Kaveny has served on a number of editorial boards including聽The American Journal of Jurisprudence,聽The Journal of Religious Ethics, the聽Journal of Law and Religion,听补苍诲聽The Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics.听She has been a visiting professor at Princeton University, Yale University, and Georgetown University, and a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago鈥檚 Martin Marty Center. From 1995 until 2013 she taught law and theology at the University of Notre Dame, where she was a John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law.听
James F. Keenan, S.J. is the Canisius Chair, Director of the Jesuit Institute, and Vice Provost of Global Engagement at Boston College. In 2003, he founded Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church, () an international network. He received the John Courtney Murray Lifetime Achievement Award from the Catholic Theological Society of America in 2019 and from 2020-2021 was president of the Society of Christian Ethics. He has written over 400 essays, edited 17 volumes, and published 13 of his own books including,聽University Ethics聽(2020) and recently聽A History of Catholic Theological Ethics聽(2022) and聽The Moral Life听(2023).
James O'Toole is聽the聽University聽Historian and Clough Professor of History Emeritus. His new book,聽For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America, has just been published from Harvard University Press.听He is also the author of聽The Faithful: A History of Catholics in America听(2008),聽Habits of Devotion: Catholic Religious Practice in Twentieth-Century America聽(2004), and聽Ever to Excel: A History of Boston College聽(2021).
Leslie Woodcock Tentler is Emerita Professor of History at the Catholic University of America in Washington, where she specialized in the history of American Catholicism. Her most recent book is American Catholics: A History, published in 2020 by Yale University Press. Her Catholics and Contraception: An American History was published by Cornell University Press in 2004; The Church Confronts Modernity: Catholicism Since 1950 in the United States, the Republic of Ireland, and Quebec, which she edited, came out in 2007.
Greeley, Andrew M. The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican聽Council. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005.听
Farrelly, Maura Jane. Review of Confession: Catholics, Repentance, and Forgiveness in America,聽by聽Patrick W. Carey. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Church History 89, no. 1 (2020): 213鈥�15. .
Keating, James F. 鈥淐onfession Eclipsed.鈥� First Things, March 19, 2025..听
Morrow, Maria C. 鈥淔rom Praiseworthy to Blameworthy: The Sacrament of Confession in聽Mid-Twentieth Century America.鈥� U.S. Catholic Historian 36, no. 1 (2018): 79鈥�102.
Morrow, Maria C. Sin in the Sixties: Catholics and Confession, 1955 -1975. Washington, DC:聽Catholic University of America Press, 2022.听
On January 22, 2025, The New York Times The article argues that widespread disillusionment stems from the gap between religious teachings and the actual practices of institutions, including their accumulation of wealth and mishandling of sexual abuse scandals. It situates this loss of trust within a broader pattern of widespread abuse and cover-ups across multiple denominations, including the Catholic, Southern Baptist, and Episcopal Churches. The piece contends that these repeated institutional failures have fostered deep cynicism (especially among younger generations like Gen Z) and have weakened communities that once provided meaning and purpose. It highlights research showing that religious involvement is often linked to a stronger sense of meaning. The loss of meaning has gone hand-in-hand with the loss of public trust in organized religion, which has sharply declined since the 1970s across all age groups, with Catholics exhibiting particularly low confidence levels. Experts suggest that transparency, repentance, and renewed moral accountability are essential steps toward rebuilding trust and cultivating a renewed sense of religious meaning. Ultimately, the article concludes that many Americans yearn for moral communities, and religious institutions must take responsibility and live up to their values in order to meet this need.
The For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Cathlic Confession in America book panel discussing James O'Toole's latest book by the same name. From (L to R): Mark Massa, S.J., M. Cathleen Kaveny, James Keenan, S.J., Leslie Tentler, and James O'Toole.
聽Mark Massa, S.J. and M. Cathleen Kaveny during the discussion.
From L to R: James Keenan, S.J., Leslie Tentler, and James O'Toole discussing O'Toole's latest book, For I Have Sinned.
On October 22, 2025, the Boisi Center welcomed the Charles I. Clough Professor of History Emeritus and University Historian at Boston College, James O'Toole, for a panel discussion of his recently published book, For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America. Panelists included AV研究所 faculty members M. Cathleen Kaveny (the Darald and Juliet Libby Millenium Professor at the Law School and Theology Department) and James Keenan S.J. (the Vice Provost for Global Engagement, Canisius Professor, and director of The Jesuit Institute) and Leslie Woodcock Tentler (Emerita Professor of History at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.), and it was moderated by Boisi Center director Mark Massa, S.J. In his book, O'Toole presented historical data documenting confession's transformation from a central Catholic practice to one largely abandoned by contemporary American Catholics. He cited records showing that priests in the 1980s routinely heard between 75 and 160 confessions in a single sitting, and he compared this to a 2025 Pew survey indicating that only 23% of American Catholics attend confession once a year while 47% never participate in the sacrament.
The panelists examined the factors that have contributed to confession's decline over the past few decades. Drawing on her research interviewing 56 priests for her book Catholics and Contraception: An American History, Tentler emphasized how the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae created significant tensions between official Church teaching and lived practice. Many priests reported that by the early 1970s "nobody is confessing [about using contraception] anymore, and we don't ask." Kaveny discussed her personal experience with changing confession practices in the late 1960s and early 70s, including the sacrament's multiple rebrandings and the shift in the timing of receiving the sacrament from second-grade to fifth-grade. She identified additional factors including the use of psychology as an alternative to confession, and the transition of students from Catholic to public schools, which reduced confession鈥檚 social reinforcement. Keenan highlighted what he termed the "itemization" of sin鈥攔educing complex moral failures to countable instances like "I disobeyed 16 times"鈥攚hich he argued trivialized serious spiritual examination. He also noted contemporary students' resistance to discussing guilt in favor of shame, suggesting a broader cultural shift away from personal moral responsibility.
A notable tension emerged during the Q&A when a priest from Cambridge highlighted significant increases in confession at St. Paul鈥檚 Parish. Priests from Boston College expressed the same trend. O'Toole responded that while he acknowledged such campus trends, he did not consider them indicative of broader revival, expressing skepticism that these practices would persist ten years after graduation given wider secularization patterns. He noted that his use of the term "collapse" to describe confession's decline had drawn criticism from reviewers pointing to robust confession participation at Catholic universities. O'Toole maintained his position, stating, "I'm a historian. I don't do the present. I do the past," and argued that historical evidence supported his characterization. Panelists discussed potential reforms for the sacrament of confession, including incorporating elements of spiritual direction and the Irish monastic tradition of anam cara (soul friend) rather than brief "assembly line" encounters. O'Toole concluded that while new forms of reconciliation may eventually emerge, historical precedent suggests such development could require 300 to 400 years, which is approximately the amount of time it took for medieval confession practices to solidify. Overall, the lively conversation offered a glimpse into the nuances, complexities, and potential for the sacrament of confession.