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From public confession to private penance: How Catholic confession has evolved over centuries

The 1953 Alfred Hitchcock film "I Confess," based on an earlier play, features a priest suspected of murder. He's innocent, and has even heard the murderer's confession—but cannot clear his own name.
National Catholic Reporter

Is confession dead? Q&A with a Catholic historian on the state of the sacrament

NCR interviews James O'Toole, whose new book, For I Have Sinned, details the growth and eventual decline of confession in the ...