Confession hypotheticals and TV

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The priest could just make up a different emergency to have people evacuate. Don’t mention the bomb or the confession or the person confessing. Then when everyone is safely out and the bomb goes off the priest offers no explanation. It’s either that or everyone gets blown up.
 
I have a goof friend who is a priest. He has been asked every iteration of this question in RCIA/CCD/Confirmation classes. His answer is standard, the priest cannot act on the information he received in the confessional because there is a chance that act would reveal the penitent.

Can’t give you a format document, but, I’m guessing most priests would say it is better to err on the side of not betraying the person who confessed.
 
TheLittleLady said:
Can’t give you a format document, but, I’m guessing most priests would say it is better to err on the side of not betraying the person who confessed.
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I suppose that’s what it is. While there is imo very little risk of betrayal it is not risk free.
 
according to Tis_Bearself, the priest could act himself “as long as he didn’t reveal anything that was said in Confession or that he even heard a Confession” and found an excuse to investigate, then if he saw or heard the bomb or other scene of crime upon this “accidental investigation” could call the authorities based on his own eyewitness alone. It sounds like a reasonable answer to me as long as he’s confident of protecting the seal.
 
The priest has to have a good reason completely separate from the confession for acting on the information he’s given, though. Depending on what this information pertains to, it may or may not be possible for the priest to have a good reason. If the bomb is in the priest’s own church, then it’s his church, he could find some reason to look through his own church without arousing suspicion. If it’s the church 10 miles away then it’s not that easy.

I can see where some, perhaps many, priests would choose to just not get involved. It’s not unlike similar situations involving lawyer-client confidentiality. Many lawyers would probably choose to just do nothing, assuming the alleged bomb is not menacing their own office or their own family member.
 
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Absent the kidnapping, this was the plot of an episode of MASH, where a penitent had told Fr. Mulcahy about a load of stolen penicillin that was going to be sold on the black market, penicillin that could have saved a lot of lives in the 4077th’s operating theater.

He goes out on his own to the rendezvous site, enlisting Klinger (but very carefully NOT telling him why they’re going or where he learned of the cache) to take the penicillin before the exchange with the black marketeers can happen. The problem is, I don’t know if even that is allowed.
 
It’s probably questionable, but these folks were at war. I don’t think busting Fr. Mulcahy for doing this would be the biggest thing on the bishop’s mind.
 
I guess the question though was that a violation that would have caused an automatic excommunication (assuming automatic excommunication was a thing in 1950) as with more concrete violations of the seal, or was it something (as you’d suggested) the Archbishop of the Military Ordinariate (or its 1950 equivalent) could handle as a disciplinary matter?
 
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