Historically, confessional booths did not come into the Church until after the Reformation. If you look at earlier woodcuts of confession—usually of people doing their annual Easter Duty—it involves the Pastor and several assistant priests seated on chairs in the front of the church, with long lines of parishioners waiting to confess and receive absolution.
The closed confessional booths began in Rome and spread through Europe beginning in the sixteenth century.
Having said that, they ARE now traditional, and confessing to a priest in a back room was never customary. The centuries old custom was broken by dissident-minded ritualist and bishops, mainly in order to break yet another custom and disrupt the sacrament. It was a way of saying, in effect, that confession isn’t really necessary.
I certainly support using the booths. More important, I support having many more time slots, including regularly schedule confessions before Mass for people who can’t easily get to the church at other times. That’s tiring for the priest and makes for a long Saturday night or Sunday; but it’s an essential part of his job to ensure that people receive the sacraments, and in particular that they go to confession after they have committed grave sins, and at least once a year during the Easter season.
**Historically, confessional booths did not come into the Church until after the Reformation.**
I was waiting for someone to come through with the history.
It was always face to face for a long, long time!