Why Is There a Box With a Screen in the Church? Privacy Imposed by Scandal

Private confession to a priest developed over centuries and was made an annual obligation for Western Christians in 1215, long before any furniture existed for it. The practice took place in the open church, with the priest seated and the penitent kneeling beside or in front of him, in view of anyone present though ideally out of earshot. That arrangement was workable and had obvious weaknesses, since the two were visible together, conversations could be overheard, and there was nothing separating them physically. The booth was introduced to address exactly those weaknesses, which means the design tells you what the problems were understood to be.

Every element of the furniture serves a stated purpose:

• •A solid partition between the two, preventing physical contact
• •A perforated screen, allowing speech while obscuring the face
• •A curtain or door on the penitent's side, concealing who is there
• •Separate entrances, so the two never meet in the process
• •Placement in a visible part of the church, so the booth itself is never private
• •A kneeler at a fixed distance, setting the posture and the proximity

The booth was promoted in the later sixteenth century, principally by Charles Borromeo in Milan, as part of a wider reform programme, and the motivation was the abuse of the practice by priests. Solicitation, meaning a priest using the occasion to make sexual advances, was a recognised and prosecuted offence, and the physical separation was intended to make it harder and to protect priests from accusations as well as penitents from priests. The booth spread rapidly across Catholic Europe and became standard. That origin is stated plainly in the sources and is frequently omitted from descriptions of the furniture, which tend to present it as being about privacy in the abstract.

Disclosing wrongdoing to somebody authorised to respond is a widespread religious pattern and the variations clarify what the Catholic arrangement actually is. Orthodox Christian practice involves confession before an icon with the priest standing alongside the penitent rather than opposite, which is deliberately positioned as both facing the same direction. Protestant traditions largely abandoned private confession to a priest at the Reformation, retaining general confession spoken by a whole congregation, and Lutheran practice keeps an individual form that is little used. Jewish practice on the Day of Atonement involves confession directly to God, spoken in the plural on behalf of the whole community. Public confession before a congregation was the earlier Christian practice and was demanding enough that people delayed it for years.

The obligation on a priest not to reveal what is said is absolute in canon law, admitting no exception for any crime however serious, and violating it carries the severest penalty the church imposes. Several priests have been imprisoned rather than testify. That absolute position has collided directly with civil law in recent decades, as jurisdictions that require reporting of child abuse have debated whether to exempt this context, and several Australian states and others have legislated to remove the exemption, which the church has said it will not comply with. The resulting standoff is unresolved and is among the sharper current conflicts between religious obligation and secular law.

Private confession was made an annual obligation in 1215 and took place in the open church for three centuries. The booth was promoted from the later sixteenth century, principally by Charles Borromeo, specifically to prevent priests soliciting penitents and to protect priests from accusation. The absolute obligation of secrecy now collides directly with mandatory reporting laws in several jurisdictions.