AURICULAR CONFESSION

Confe ion of sins to a priest in private, distinguished from the public confe ion which was enjoined as a duty by the primitive church, but was early allowed to drop into disuse. It was on occasion of the scandal which the original practice produced, that Leo the Great, in the fifth century, first recommended private confe ion to a priest in certain cases. It was not till the fourth council of Later an in 1215, that the doctrine of the nece ity of this practice was formally established. [s. 121]