Response to FrDavid96,
So it’s fine to talk about the article, but NOT what the person confessed. So you could say to someone, “Oh I heard in the news a priest broke the seal of confession,” but if the other person asks what sin was revealed specifically, I wouldn’t be able to tell them. Am I understanding correctly?
Yes, you’re understanding it correctly.
It does not matter how you came to know the sin. One should never repeat that information to anyone else.
I did try to make that clear when I wrote my last part
Anyone who learns about someone else’s confession is bound to keep that secret, and not to tell anyone else. The fact that someone can easily learn it (by buying a paper) does not change that.
continuing
What about talking about this stuff in a more general way? If I were to say to someone in a general way, not identifying anyone, “I’ve heard of priests breaking the seal of confession to report crimes confessed to them,” that would not be allowed?
I would prefer to use a slightly different vocabulary. Answering if something is “allowed” with a simple ‘yes or no’ doesn’t always suffice. It doesn’t answer other questions such as 'allowed by whom?" or ‘against the 10 Commandments or against Canon Law?’ etc. Therefore, indulge me to respond this way:
Talking about a newspaper article is not breaking the Seal of Confession. That information is already what we call “public knowledge.” However, that doesn’t make it right. One can talk about the article itself, lamenting the newspaper’s poor judgement in deciding to publish, or the priest’s poor judgement in revealing, etc. Conversation about the situation is fine, although even there, it can devolve into the sin of gossip or the sin of harming another’s reputation.
Having said that, though, the fact remains that anyone who learns of someone else’s sin is still bound to keep that secret. It just doesn’t matter how one learns of it.
Maybe an example can help here:
We know that it is wrong to show a third party a photograph of someone who is naked when that photo was taken without the subject’s consent. A photographer sneaks up to someone’s home and through a window takes a photo of “Actress Jane” while she’s getting ready for a bath. She has no knowledge of this, and certainly doesn’t consent. The photo gets published in a magazine (let’s say a gossip magazine, not a porn one, just for discussion sake). One who buys that magazine is not guilty, under civil law, of violating her privacy–the photographer, the publisher, etc. but not the customer.
Here’s the point: it would be wrong for Jimmy to actually show that photo to his friend. It would not be illegal under civil law, but it would still be violating Jane’s privacy. Jimmy doesn’t get a pass just because he bought the photo instead of having taken it himself. It’s still morally wrong for him to share it. Jane still has a right to her privacy, and every time that photo is shared with a new person, her privacy is violated.
Take that scenario one step further. Even in civil law, it’s illegal to distribute child pornography. One cannot offer as a defense “I downloaded it from the internet.” One cannot distribute it to others just because the source is the internet. Even our civil law recognizes that it doesn’t matter what the source might be. Distributing it to someone else is always wrong. The law doesn’t stop at prosecuting the photographer only. Why? Because it’s always wrong to share such pictures with other people, regardless of how one came to possess it.
So back to the original question:
One who reads about a confession in the newspaper is not actually guilty of the specific crime of directly violating the Seal of Confession. That specific crime carries a penalty of excommunication. Given the circumstances of the original scenario, not even the lesser crime of indirectly violating the Seal would apply to the average person who simply reads the article and discusses it with someone else. While it would not be a canonical crime, it would still be morally wrong----yes, there is a distinction to be made here.
I’m trying to understand just how far the secrecy of confession goes.
That’s rather easy to answer. The Seal of the Confession is absolute. Period. Done.
The bottom line is this: whenever anyone goes to Confession, that person is always entitled to absolute secrecy. It is always wrong to talk about someone else’s confession (unless the penitent freely shares it, of course).
There are degrees of moral culpability. The priest who reveals the information is at the extreme end of that scale of culpability. The person who reads about the sins in the paper then shares that information with someone else is still in the wrong. It’s still sinful, even if it would not incur any specific canonical penalty.
