Louisiana court's ruling that Catholic priest testify about confession criticized by Baton Rouge Diocese

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VeritasLuxMea said:
I’m a little confused.

First of all, the girl and family have apparently given permission for the priest to speak. In these cases, a priest is allowed to speak about the confession, isn’t he?

Also, what does the family stand to gain from having the priest testify?
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No. He cannot break the seal. And they stand to gain money.
 
VeritasLuxMea said:
I’m a little confused.

First of all, the girl and family have apparently given permission for the priest to speak. In these cases, a priest is allowed to speak about the confession, isn’t he?

Also, what does the family stand to gain from having the priest testify?
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No, the only way he could speak about what she said was if she repeated it all to him again outside of confession. A priest can’t disclose what was said to him during a confession,** no matter what.**

Edit: Looks like Lapey beat me to the punch 😛
 
VeritasLuxMea said:
I’m a little confused.

First of all, the girl and family have apparently given permission for the priest to speak. In these cases, a priest is allowed to speak about the confession, isn’t he?

Also, what does the family stand to gain from having the priest testify?
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They’re suing him and I guess they figure he won’t lie.

First, the “family” has no say in this matter. It’s strictly between the penitent and the confessor.

As I understand it, as long as she spoke under the seal of confession he cannot even confirm that she confessed. She’d have to repeat everything outside of confession and then he could testify to that.
 
WBRZ the local ABC station in Baton Rouge was the main reason the Diocese released this statement.

here is their version of the story. They also had a video of the story on tonights local news, I would think they will put it online tomorrow.

wbrz.com/news/news-2-investigates-from-confessional-to-court/
BATON ROUGE - The Diocese of Baton Rouge is firing back over a lawsuit involving a local priest who didn’t report sexual abuse he knew about to authorities or parents of the alleged victim. The case is now tangled up in court, and has already made its way to the Louisiana Supreme Court.
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Rebecca Mayeux was 14 when she claims the abuse first began by a local parishioner at her Catholic Church. When she went to her priest for advice, he kept his sacred code of silence. This is a case that has the Catholic Church defending its deeply rooted traditions that are steeped in confidentiality. It’s those traditions the victim and her attorney believe prevented the priest from reporting the abuse he knew about.
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they had a very extreme bias against the Church in this article and the video piece they did. The diocese declined to do a video interview instead they asked that the statement be read on the air, instead they just posted a link on their website. My guess is that the diocese felt that the statement they made on Monday was sufficient for explaining their position on the matter. In this statement the diocese refused to comment on the case itself which is their common practice. Rather they complained about the supreme courts ruling on the issue, saying they can’t determine if a confession took place or not. I think the diocese acted wisely by not interviewing on TV. I suspect it would have just been repeating what they already said, we don’t comment on court cases, but the supreme court of Louisiana violated our freedom of religion and that of the priest so that is why we made our statement. (which is what was said in the statement)

edit: now I’m no lawyer and don’t know much legal stuff but when the girl explained what happened on WBRZ it seemed different than what she said in the court case. Maybe I’m reading to much into it but it just caught my attention.
 
EmperorNapoleon said:
The Catholic Church cannot expect the alleged efforts to take strong measures against sexual abuse to be taken seriously by the world if it takes the position that priests can and will knowingly allow sexual abuse of children to occur in their parishes so long as they’re told about it in a confessional. Its a perversion of the Seal of Confession and should be a crime not a religious freedom issue. Its the sex abuse scandal all over again.
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I hate to tell you this but it is a crime to make this priest tell what is going on in Confession. They are violating his religious freedom very clearly. The judge who is making him testify ought to be ashamed of himself.

That said, I don’t believe that allowing the Seal of Confession to be absolute hurts the Church in matters of sexual abuse in the least. If the government is so incompetent with all of the spying going on and such that they can’t figure out that someone is a child molester without violating a priest’s religious freedom so severely that he’d be excommunicated then that’s pretty darn incompetent and pretty darn sad.
 
cycleman said:
Are you really saying that you would risk the future rape and murder of others by hiding behind the seal? The perpetrator can still confess and receive absolution, no one is stopping him/her from doing that.

To sit back silently and watch silently as future abuse happens is totally abhorrent!!
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I think you may not understand the full extent and meaning of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. In confession, Catholics promise to confess the sin, do penance for it and promise to avoid the sin in the future. Part of the penance is always righting the wrong if possible. Yes, a perpetrator of child sexual abuse may confess and receive absolution; HOWEVER, part of receiving the absolution must be the promise to right the wrong i.e. the abuser must accede to civil authorities and confess his guilt to the police. But the Seal of the Confessional is absolute. And any attempt by the government to force a priest break this Seal is unconstitutional.
 
BATON ROUGE - The Diocese of Baton Rouge is firing back over a lawsuit involving a local priest who didn’t report sexual abuse he knew about to authorities or parents of the alleged victim. The case is now tangled up in court, and has already made its way to the Louisiana Supreme Court.
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Shouldn’t this read, “…who didn’t report sexual abuse he **allegedly **knew about?”
 
sweetcharity said:
Shouldn’t this read, “…who didn’t report sexual abuse he **allegedly **knew about?”
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Good observation.

You know the media wants to put guilt on the Priest even before a trial.
Anything they can do to attack the Church goes.

So tired of this secular immoral world… you have no idea.
 
NeedsMercy said:
I think you may not understand the full extent and meaning of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. In confession, Catholics promise to confess the sin, do penance for it and promise to avoid the sin in the future. Part of the penance is always righting the wrong if possible
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. Yes, a perpetrator of child sexual abuse may confess and receive absolution; HOWEVER, part of receiving the absolution must be the promise to right the wrong i.e. the abuser must accede to civil authorities and confess his guilt to the police. But the Seal of the Confessional is absolute. And any attempt by the government to force a priest break this Seal is unconstitutional.

I’m pretty sure that the bolded part is not true.
 
Bell(name removed by moderator) said:
So if one priest confesses to another that he’s a rapist, child molester or sexual predator of any sort, the priest hearing the confession is not allowed to report him?
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If he absolves him, yes.

If the priest doesn’t say the words of absolution, the priest can report him, I think
 
A priest confessor can never require that a penitent expose himself. That will never be assigned as penance or required as a prerequisite to absolution.
 
NeedsMercy said:
Explain.
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From apologist Jimmy Akin:
A priest cannot make his absolution conditional on you going and confessing a crime–i.e., he can’t assign it as a penance that you go tell the police (or anyone else) what you did.
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If he could do this then the seal of the sacrament would be meaningless as any priest could force any penitent to publicly disclose what he did.
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more…
 
Well, color me improperly catechized! I apologize for my HUGE mistake. I guess “righting the wrong” only applies to little kids that shoplift candy… 🤷
 
If the state does not respect the Seal of the Confessional, then it is essentially claiming not only that religious freedom does not exist, but also that there exists no right to privacy whatsoever that the state cannot overrule at its whim.

No patient-doctor confidentiality, no spousal privilege, no client-attorney privilege (which the Courts adamantly preserve because it is absolutely essential to the integrity of the Justice System – exact same thing here, the Seal is absolutely essential to the integrity of Reconciliation).

So it’s not just religious freedom that is under threat here, but ALL privacy rights, and the entire justice system.

The girl and the family could easily resolve this issue if she just recreated the situation outside of the confessional. The priest may even have advised her to do that–sounds like it, from the YouTube homily the news mentioned, and even from the girl’s allegations about what he said to her in the confessional.

Moreover, I don’t know what they hope to solve. Could you remember a specific word-for-word conversation 6 years ago, much less one among a common practice (offering Reconciliation)?

That, combined with the death of the alleged abuser (whom other people are vouching for, as well), really just make it seem like the girl and the family are bitter about the priest for some reason and have some axe to grind, or are just after money. Seems like she’s bitter about what he thinks she told her–the article never mentions that she’s upset that he didn’t report it (which, of course, she could have done, or could have told him about it outside of the privacy of confession if she wanted something done). And even if the priest were able to talk about it (after 6 years, when no one really remembers what was said, not even the girl), it would be his word against hers. If she were really under stress, especially of the sort like abuse causes where people invert and twist all sorts of things they perceive around them, it would be easy enough for her to have misinterpreted what he said, even to remember it differently.

After all, I could allege all sorts of things about what the Pope said to me in the confessional, could claim heinous words and sexual advances and so forth. Never mind I’ve never even met the Pope, much less going to him for Reconciliation (I wish!!!). But he could not defend himself or even say that I never came to see him.

Very convenient. Expect to see this new avenue of attack snapped up by SNAP and others. SNAP will start accusing of abuse in the confessional now, knowing the priests can say nothing about it in their defense.
 
Holly3278 said:
I hate to tell you this but it is a crime to make this priest tell what is going on in Confession. They are violating his religious freedom very clearly. The judge who is making him testify ought to be ashamed of himself.
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There is no religious freedom to conceal the rape of children.
 
Arandur said:
After all, I could allege all sorts of things about what the Pope said to me in the confessional, could claim heinous words and sexual advances and so forth. Never mind I’ve never even met the Pope, much less going to him for Reconciliation (I wish!!!). But he could not defend himself or even say that I never came to see him.

Very convenient. Expect to see this new avenue of attack snapped up by SNAP and others. SNAP will start accusing of abuse in the confessional now, knowing the priests can say nothing about it in their defense.
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Exactly!!! 👍
 
Atisor207 said:
There is certainly religious freedom to respect a sacrament.
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Not any when endangers a child. The fact that this is even defended by anyone speaks volumes about the long road ahead in sex abuse reforms in the Catholic Church.
 
EmperorNapoleon said:
Not any when endangers a child. The fact that this is even defended by anyone speaks volumes about the long road ahead in sex abuse reforms in the Catholic Church.
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This is the same ideology that will throw a child under the bus as long as that child’s age is below nine months. Sorry to rain on your parade. The Catholic Church defends souls whether they are children, men, women, clergy or lay. The effective administration of the Sacrament rests upon its utmost secrecy. This has served the world well for 2,000 years, during which many principalities and powers have liked to see the Church change her ways, and much to the chagrin of these principalities and powers, the Church survived while they did not.

Corruption is regrettable and needs to be dealt with on every level. But the Seal of the Confessional is not something contributing to anyone’s corruption, rather it is a protection from it, and a lasting testament to that is the dearth of cases where it has been violated.
 
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