I CONFESS is truly one of Hitchcock’s under appreciated films (along with STAGE FRIGHT from the same period) and it is good to see it receiving some of the attention it well deserves. There are plenty of “shadowy” scenes in the picture so it certainly does qualify as film noir.

One does come away from it sad, however, because the film depicts Quebec as it once was, and so very recently, before the Church shot itself in the foot in the 1960s and allowed the world to collapse around it. But when the Church comes back to its senses (which it will one day) then society will come back to its senses.

Regarding the Church/State arguments that some posters have made, allow me to recommend that they read Belloc’s “Europe and the Faith.” That will show them, once and for all, what the true relationship of Church and state should be, and once was.

21. There was once a time when States were governed by the philosophy of the Gospel. Then it was that the power and divine virtue of Christian wisdom had diffused itself throughout the laws, institutions, and morals of the people, permeating all ranks and relations of civil society. Then, too, the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting dignity, flourished everywhere, by the favour of princes and the legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and State were happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices. The State, constituted in this wise, bore fruits important beyond all expectation, whose remembrance is still, and always will be, in renown, witnessed to as they are by countless proofs which can never be blotted out or ever obscured by any craft of any enemies. Christian Europe has subdued barbarous nations, and changed them from a savage to a civilized condition, from superstition to true worship. It victoriously rolled back the tide of Mohammedan conquest; retained the headship of civilization; stood forth in the front rank as the leader and teacher of all, in every branch of national culture; bestowed on the world the gift of true and many-sided liberty; and most wisely founded very numerous institutions for the solace of human suffering. And if we inquire how it was able to bring about so altered a condition of things, the answer is-beyond all question, in large measure, through religion, under whose auspices so many great undertakings were set on foot, through whose aid they were brought to completion.

It seems to me that to formally make one religion the religion of “the state” would perforce make members/followers of other religions “outlaws” so to speak. But if the predominant religion comes to inform all aspects of a society, not through law or formal decree, but through heartfelt belief & sincere daily practice by the people, the religion itself is honored in a much more beautiful, indeed glorious, way.

Crucifixes should be in the public sphere not only because they reflect the splendor of Truth but also as a reflection of Christian society, not merely by governmental decree. To the best of my knowledge, there were no declarations in pre-reformation England that the Church was the state religion, it simply informed all aspects of society and so this did not even need to be formally enunciated. That is Western civilization in all its glory!

The union of state and Catholicism (i.e., Truth) was an excellent thing. It gave us Western Civilization.