Confession reached its peak attendance in the early 1950s, but by the end of the Second Vatican Council, the popularity of the sacrament plummeted. While this decline is often noted by historians, theologians, priests, and laity alike - all eager to provide possible explanations - little attention has been paid to another dramatic shift. Coincident with the decreasing popularity of the sacrament of penance in the United States were changes to non-sacramental penitential practices, including Lenten fasting, Ember Days, and the year-round Friday meat abstinence. American Catholics - sometimes derisively called Fisheaters - had assiduously observed Friday abstinence, regardless of ethnicity or geographic location.

This paradigm-breaking book dares to rethink the whole of the '60s experience, not from a political or sociological viewpoint but from an historical/theological perspective. Camille Paglia wrote that 'the spiritual history of the sixties has yet to be written.' This is that book. The book's chapters each correspond to a line in Emily Dickinson's poem 'Finding is the first act.' The parallel to Dickinson's experience in the psychic wilderness demonstrates just how much the experience of the '60s was part of an ongoing American story not an aberration. Though it seems contradictory, this book argues for an appreciation of the three '60s: 1960s, 1860s, 1660s, each a chapter of the religious core of the American story.

"Morrow's book will have wide-ranging appeal. Scholars of American Catholicism, students in courses on Catholicism, and nonacademic readers interested in the changing history of a Catholic sacrament will find much to appreciate in this book. Recommended for upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.Choice "A stimulating reflection on a major cultural and spiritual change within the Church. It will prove a valuable resource for any theological reflection on the virtue and sacrament of penance today."-New Blackfriars

In all its forbidden glory, period "sleaze" erotica receives an investigation into the medium with extensive interviews and cover art.

Text by William Straw.

What would it take to renew our ability to name our sins in a meaningful and pertinent way? Naming sins is a particularly important task for Catholic moral theology, but it is one that often falls back into a paradigm of simple violations of rules. While laws and commandments are essential, Vatican II’s universal call to holiness and the revival of virtue ethics require moving further. Yet in part because moral theologians today tend to be lay people, not priests, there has been a de-emphasis on the confession of sins. Contemporary questions like poverty, racism, and abortion are usually connected to questions about sin in some way, but they are disconnected from the idea of naming specific sins in the sacrament of penance. Lay moral theologians raise these issues in a way that makes clear their implications for a parish social justice committee (or the voting booth), but not their implications for the naming of sins in the sacrament of reconciliation. Naming Our Sins proposes to re-make that connection: the moral theologian’s task of helping people name individual sins needs to be restored, though in ways distinctive from dominant pre-Vatican II notions. In this volume, editors Jana Bennett and David Cloutier gather some of the best of the current generation of moral theologians in order to reflect on the classic tradition of the vices. It is crucial to the Christian understanding of sin that we recognize (a) we bear at least some responsibilities for injuries, and (b) God wants us to participate in the process of healing and conversion. Neither the sin itself nor the healing simply come from somewhere else; the task of naming sins enlists us as mature, growing disciples. Each chapter takes on a different classical vice, describing the vice, exploring its dimensions in contemporary experience, and moving the reader toward naming specific sins that arise from the vice. The concluding chapters from Catholic priests explore two basic dimensions of the sacrament of penance: liturgical and communal.

Swappers, singers, transvestites, nymphos, hookers, dominatrixes, lesbians: these subjects were only several of the naughty novels of the 1960s. This lurid, taboo book genre (known to collectors of vintage smut gems as 'sleaze') only went as far as third base' - hardcore pornography only came to play after the mid-70s. Sin-A-Rama explores the long-neglected and often brilliant popcult manifestation, with attention paid to what occurred behind closed doors with the pseudonymous and sometimes jailed authors and artists.'