“Do you want to be made well? Do we want to be made well?” Sister Maria Theotokos Adams of the Roman Catholic order of the Sisters of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará asked these questions at the Anglo-Catholic Conference “New Life in Christ: Anglican Approaches to Confession” held at Church of the Advent in Boston on November 6 and 7. Clergy, seminarians, and laity gathered to explore the history, theology, and practicalities of the sacramental rite of private confession in Anglicanism.
Sister Maria Theotokos Adams opened the first session with a reflection on “‘While We Were Yet Sinners’: Finding the Drama of Salvation in Our Own Lives.” She asked to what extent our lived experience makes room for understanding ourselves as sinners in need of salvation, and described knowing that God does not wait for us to be good as “the heart of the gospel.”
She framed sin fundamentally as a rupture of our relationship with Christ. Confession and absolution are how that relationship is restored. “Do you want to be well?” she asked. “Do we want to be well? To be well … means that we have to choose to want to be well and admit that we have been sick.”
The General Confession that is part of our corporate liturgical life does express this desire to be made well, though she described it as safe. “It is generic. It is public. It is formulaic. It is acceptable and in no way embarrassing.” In contrast, the penitent names personal sins in private confession, and this will “let the drama of salvation enter into our own and inevitably messy lives.”
The Rev. Ian McCormack, director of Grafton House and priest associate at Church of the Advent, traced the history of the seal of confession in which the priest may not reveal anything that was disclosed in confession.
Before the Reformation, theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas emphasized that the seal was absolute because a priest hears confessions as God’s minister. Aquinas taught that it would be a violation of the nature of the sacrament to reveal what was said. McCormack said the Catholic canons that understood the seal of confession as absolute remained in effect through the English Reformation.
During the 19th century, specifically Anglican manuals for confessors started to be published, as an extension of the Oxford Movement. McCormack said that these manuals preserved an absolute understanding of the seal of confession that forbade the priest from revealing what was said in confession and from requiring the penitent to self-disclose. Penance should be medicinal and remedial, not punitive. A priest may assign penance, and failure to complete the penance may be a sin, but the priest cannot make absolution contingent on completing a penance.
The Rev. Philip Corbett, vicar of St. Silas Kentish Town in London, spoke on “Confession, Converts, and Convents: The Sacrament of Penance and the Oxford Movement.” He also focused on the absolute nature of the seal of confession. Corbett discussed Father Timothy Stanton of the Community of the Resurrection in South Africa, who was imprisoned for refusing to break the seal regarding his work with the anti-apartheid movement in 1983.
He also discussed the case of Constance Kent, who was accused of murder and made a private confession to her priest before going to court and pleading guilty to the charges. Corbett said some historians believe that Constance Kent’s brother was the actual murderer, but she pleaded guilty to protect him.
If that was the case, the priest involved kept the seal even at the cost of seeing an innocent person convicted of the crime. In our era, a lot of discussion involving the seal of confession implicates safeguarding concerns, but Corbett observed that these concerns are well-established in the historical record.
Dr. Ryan Danker, director of the John Wesley Institute, spoke on “Watching Over One Another in Love: Confession and Accountability in the 18th-Century Evangelical Revival.” Unlike other speakers who spoke about Anglo-Catholics, Danker discussed evangelicals influenced by John and Charles Wesley, who became known as Methodists.
Followers of this movement were organized into small groups called “bands” and mutual confession and accountability were fundamental parts of these bands. At each meeting, members were to ask each other “searching questions,” including what sins they had committed and temptations they had faced. These groups did not offer absolution to each other, as they understood forgiveness as coming directly from God, and they did not see these conversations as sacramental.
While Anglican traditions generally saw private confession as helpful but optional, Methodists were required to confess their sins to one another regularly. Such confession was understood as a vital part of growing in holiness, and they understood holiness as requiring community accountability in this way. Anyone who did not participate in these conversations would be removed from the band and from the Methodist movement more broadly.
Danker asked what innovative forms we might develop in our day, responding to the needs of our current time without changing the identity of the Anglo-Catholic vision. “There’s great power in the use of small groups, no matter the churchmanship,” he said.
The Rev. Peter Anthony, vicar of All Saints Margaret Street, London, described how his parish has seen a drastic increase in confessions in the last few years, increasing from hearing 12 confessions total from October 2021 to October 2022 to 199 between October 2024 and October 2025.
Anthony said that All Saints has a history of being a church where people regularly come in order to make their confessions, but that was happening much less frequently in recent years. Parish priests would be available to hear confessions before the evening Mass each day, but were often frustrated when no one came.
Numbers of penitents increased when the parish tried a different strategy. All Saints started inviting guest priests to hear confessions periodically, recognizing that some people may not want to confess to their parish priest. Anthony said that they tried to invite priests who were known as particularly skilled confessors. This resulted in a significant increase in people making confessions to these guest priests and an increase in penitents seeing clergy from the parish staff.
Anthony observed that many of these penitents are young adults and said that many young adults seem to be looking for a rigorous expression of Catholic life. In addition, he said that young adults are used to the idea that they should prioritize their mental health and consult various sources of counseling and accountability. An increase of interest in private confession is part of that generational shift.
Dr. Neil Robertson, professor of humanities at the University of King’s College in Halifax, spoke on “Confession and the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer.” Drawing from the work of Anglican theologian Robert Crouse, Robertson focused on the Exhortation formerly used at all services of Holy Communion. The Book of Common Prayer included a General Confession in regular services, which was different from the medieval practice of individual confession, and made that General Confession the standard Anglican practice.
Within that context, the Communion exhortation also includes the possibility of private confession to a priest if that would be pastorally valuable to soothe a parishioner’s troubled conscience. By placing this invitation to confession within the Communion exhortation, Anglican theology framed confession as preparing the Christian soul for Communion.
“Reconciliation really belongs to the reconciliation of the Eucharist, the final reconciliation of all things,” Robertson said.
The Church of the Advent is an Anglo-Catholic parish founded in 1844. The rector, the Rev. Alistair Macdonald-Radcliff, described its mission as the “renewal and revival of the Anglo-Catholic tradition.” In 2024, the parish launched Grafton House, an educational and outreach initiative seeking to teach and evangelize through the Anglo-Catholic tradition. This conference was cosponsored by Church of the Advent, Grafton House, and The Anglican Way, the Prayer Book Society USA’s journal on Anglican history and doctrine.
Kristen Filipic is a lay Episcopalian and freelance writer in Boston.
