Exclusion, Penance, and the Box: Retracing Mercy in the Birth of the Confessional
Authors: Kahambing Jan Gresil 
Published: October 2022

It is the concern of this paper to retrace, rather than diachronically expound, some of the events that substantiate the forging of the confessional box within the historicity of confession. It exposes that the birth of the confessional (box) is an issue of how confession evolved from the varying historical instances that project man’s yearning for reconciliation and salvation. It thereby retraces the formulations of mercy within such context. Hence, the paper will delve into confession’s history vis-à-vis its roots, practices, and evolution from its ancient, medieval, and eventual modern institutionalization in the Council of Trent. The paper runs in two parts: 1) it discusses the art of exclusion and control of penance that is distinctive of the ancient and medieval practices of reconciliation respectively, and 2) it proceeds into a discussion of the crisis of mercy and the eventual forging of the confessional box.

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