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Protestants thought confession had become a burdensome routine as well as a source of illicit profit and power for the church. Ironically, however, they ended up re-creating the very thing they criticized. By liberating confession from its institutional restraints, the Reformers laid the groundwork that made it ubiquitous. Without the assurance of external absolution, Protestants needed a way of demonstrating the authenticity of their internal convictions. The Puritans solved this problem by requiring all Christians to give an account of their conversion. As a result, confessions became as standardized as they were in the Middle Ages. By the 19th century, revivalists had turned confession into big business. Catholicism, for all of its problems, had kept confessions private and confidential, while Protestants transformed them into a public spectacle.
By the 20th century, the secularization of confession was complete. Confession became a way of gaining attention, adjudicating blame, and even overturning (rather than confirming) social conventions. (After all, what is confession without shame except another name for exhibitionism?) Political and religious leaders increasingly relied on the forgiveness confession naturally obtained to hold onto their power. As Bauer writes, "Public confession had become the most powerful means by which leaders acknowledged the power of their followers." Confession is the price the powerful must pay when they want to be treated just like one of us, rather than thrown into jail.
A further irony is that Catholic leaders have been the least adept at using confession to save their careers. Teddy Kennedy's televised confession that he had been involved in the drowning death of a young woman near Chappaquiddick Island was all explanation and no contrition. He blamed a concussion, not moral weakness, for his inexcusable conduct after the accident. Bauer speculates that, "Protestant-style public confession, which might have saved Kennedy, was foreign to his own religious training."
Then there is the sad case of Bernard Cardinal Law, ruling bishop of Boston, a man who must have heard thousands of confessions during his long ministry but—when it most counted—could not make one of his own. Reading the closing chapter on Law, after several chapters on Clinton, it is hard not to wonder whether the cardinal should have tried to learn a lesson or two from the former president. Bauer includes the cardinal's six statements apologizing for the sexual offenses of priests, which should be required reading for all bishops in training. Cardinal Law got caught up in subtle questions about the culpability of his own intentions, and he was determined to maintain the confidentiality of the confessions of priests. By following the customs of his Church, he led his diocese into disaster. Cardinal Law did not understand the extent to which he had come to represent the entire Catholic hierarchy on the priest abuse scandal. He blamed the medical and psychological authorities for bad advice, and he relied on the language of business management to insist that he was the best person to reform the system. That so many Catholics were dissatisfied by his various statements demonstrates just how Protestantized American Catholics have become.
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