Confession and the Anglican Way

What then have I to do with men, that they should hear my confessions- as if they could heal all my infirmities- a race, curious to know the lives of others, slothful to amend their own? Why seek they to hear from me what I am; who will not hear from Thee what themselves are? Augustine, Confessions Book X

A number of comments and questions have been raised concerning the question of private auricular confession and the Anglican tradition in light of the 2 July 2014 vote by the Anglican Church of Australia’s General Synod to open the seal of confession.

The comments come in two forms: praise for the action which was designed to combat child and elder abuse and prevent criminals from sheltering under the seal of confession, and anger over the abandonment of an immemorial tradition of the church. A desecration of a sacrament, some have suggested.

The statements by Melbourne Archbishop Philip Freier, the new primate of Australia, that the seal of the confession was not considered to be absolute by the English reformers has come under attack as un-Anglican and un-Christian, as has the statement in the press accounts that the Anglican reformers rejected private confession and that it was all but unknown until the Catholic revival of the Nineteenth Century Oxford movement. Keep reading

See also
Voices of the Church of England on Auricular Confession
You can confess - but not to an Anglican priest

For a further discussion of confession and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, I recommend Dyson Hague's The Protestantism of the Prayer Book.