Article: "California Prepares to Make Martyrs of the Confessional." California legislature considering law that could jail priests who don't break sea

[ProdglArchitect]

I’d forgotten about that,

I rescind my statement, the courts of California are a hellscape of irrationality and hatred of faith… May God bless those priests who suffer in His name.

 

[tafan2]

You are not considering the trend in western societies. What was laughable 20 years ago, is well accepted by the courts today. Even Obama would not declare support for gay marriages in 2008, now you will find no one in the democratic party who will oppose it. In Canada, even teaching that homosexual acts are sinful could get one arrested for hate crimes. 20 years ago, no one would have even suggested removing the clergy privilege of confidentiality.
So the statements like, “the bill will never pass, courts will never uphold such a bill, such entrapment” ring hollow to me. If you make the such statements strictly about the present, then you are likely correct. There is a definite fear of what will happen 10 or 20 years from now. BTW, such entrapment happens all the time with other crimes.

There was a thread the other day where I and others also proposed taking away face-to-face confession in order to solve the problem. I have decided that is delusional also. The courts will simply say the priest could have easily stepped out of the confessional to identify the abuser.

 

[tafan2]

I hate to be alarmist, normally I am not, but I do not see how this plays out well. Over the long term, this can happen, and it could very well be the start of a great persecution of the church. When this becomes law and priests are being arrested for “harboring abusers”, things could snowball from there. It is sadly ironic that the great corruption of the Church is what will have given civil authorities the foot in the door to start the persecution. Not unlike certain aspects of the reformation, where it was the wealth and corruption of the Church which started the slide toward the cleaving of Christendom.

 

[YourNameHere]

I doubt this bill will get very far. But it makes for a big CAF headline.

 

[phoage]

The legal term for that is entrapment.

Patrick
AMDG

 

[Sbee0]

30% of the state population identifies as Catholic. I’m sure the legislature there is aware that passing this amendment seen a direct attack on the Catholic faith, not to mention being unconstitutional, will not play well with voters other than a tiny fringe secular Left minority.

 

[ZMystiCat]

This would be very questionable. The priest could do nothing to investigate a confession in order to obtain evidence.

I never said anything about actively investigating the matter.

No, a priest cannot do this.

Please do not remove what I say from the context in which I said it. I was responding to a question about how a priest could even give witness considering the often-anonymous nature of the sacrament. I wasn’t making a comment about what is/isn’t allowed under the seal of confession.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Nightmare scenario: a ‘Penitent’ sent by the state comes in to confess abusing a child, knowing full well Fr. X is the priest for that day, and records his confession. If Fr. X says nothing to the authorities … here come the cops.

There’s a good chance that would be considered entrapment and wouldn’t stand.

 

[MarthaSo]

I’m a little conflicted/confused on this issue. If in fact, and I can’t imagine this never happened in the history of the world, a child abuser did confess and the priest knew the family. I feel like Jesus would want this abuse to stop. If the priest told on him the helpless child would no longer have to deal with nightly sexual abuse.
What do priests do in these cases?

 

[MarthaSo]

I was wondering what they can do, knowing a young child is being abused, to prevent it immediately from happening again since I sense this is what Jesus would want, especially when there is knowledge of it happening. What if it were our daughters or granddaughters that we love so much being hurt every night. There should be something that can be done to protect them from harm once it has been disclosed that a child is being hurt daily.

 

[mythbuster1]

He would be in a position to make an entrapment defense: you cannot be prosecuted for a crime that exists exclusively because of the actions of law enforcement creating it.

 

[mythbuster1]

If a state attempts to enforce a law that Federal courts have ruled unconstitutional, the President is authorized to declare martial law to enforce the court order. If California attempted to enforce such a law in defiance of the Supreme Court, President Trump would federalize the California National Guard and order them to free the priests by force. Refusal on the part of the National Guardsmen would constitute the crime of mutiny under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which means a very long sentence in Leavenworth, or if the circumstances are grave enough, execution by firing squad.