Melbourne archbishop says he'd rather go to jail than report child abuse heard in confession

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Correct me if I’m wrong here, but isn’t a priest breaking the seal of confession a mortal sin that only the Holy Father can absolve?
 
alphawoman said:
Not going to jail is a practical outcome. What is the moral outcome? How does avoidance of jail or other criminal sanctions for a crime committed positively form the character and behaviour of the criminal offender?
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You have this backwards. In order to assert a moral obligation, the burden of justifying that there is an obligation falls on the one asserting it. One doesn’t need to positively justify not wanting to go to jail.
Why is the value of a human life, in the case of an individual planning murder, less valuable than the criminal’s desired right to confess without receiving a civil sanction? The Church is not the party regulating access to the sacrament of reconciliation, the offender is by his or her choice to avoid civil punishment. The offender has the equal ability to access absolution after being incarcerated.
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Confession assumes that the crime has already happened. In that case, the salvation of the offender’s soul (which would be much more burdensome if what you suggested were in force) is of more importance than ensuring that the state prosecutes one particular offender.
I appreciate that penance can restore the value of a soul, which is infinite, and of greater value than a human life. But the Church, in its canon law on the inviolability of the confessional seal, is creating a perverse incentive system which lowers the effective cost of crime. If a criminal wants to be “forgiven” in the eternal sense, and all that is required is confession, the practically lived cost of crime—even heinous crime— approaches zero.

That is truly problematic.
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It is not the job of the Church to inflict punishment for civil crimes. Even in the case of the most serious canonical delicts, all the Church will impose through the confessional is a penance issued (without knowing the name of the offender) by the Apostolic Penitentiary.

Ensuring that criminals are punished is the duty of the state in the external forum. It is not the duty of a criminal to ensure that the state fulfills it.
 
May God bless him.

It is the criminal who has to turn himself in to secular justice
 
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Such a priest would have to make recourse to the Holy See (not the Pope personally), which could be done anonymously through another confessor.
 
Ok. Good to know. Bottom line is breaking the seal is about as bad a sin as can be committed.
 
A crime doesn’t have to be committed for confession to be required and a priest to intervene. The sin of anger has many gradations, which can tip into mortal sin depending on the intent of the offender. A priest would logically seek further information if he has heard a deeply concerning confession or clarification.

A confession can also pertain to a previous crime and an intended crime. In that case, the priest has more reason to believe someone would be harmed.
 
Confession is not an intervention. In confession, the penitent is his own accuser and prosecutor. There is no cross examination.

In my parish, a priest might hear 15 to 20 confessions during the half hour alloted before Mass. How many crimes do you think are being confessed? Must the priest take notes and jot down names? Because he’s sure not going to remember any of that five minutes after he steps out of the confessional. And incidentally, he can’t see or identify any of the penitents.
 
I’ve provided moral justification—that existence in the civil state requires adherence to its laws, and failure to adhere to them causes harm to victims and society.

Failure to sanction crimes reduces the cost of crime and increases the societal incidence of crime, not just for Catholic offenders, but others. Restitution is not provided absent punishment, and deterrence is hampered.

Knowledge of a crime—and failure to prevent it—is to tacitly condone the crime and bear some of its responsibility.

Failure of the Church to support the civil prevention of violent crime also does injury to the perceived moral authority of the church, which compromises evangelization and adherence to its doctrines. Now we are considering a situation where not only the soul of an offender is in the balance, but also the souls of marginal Catholics or prospective converts, who will not seek recourse to the Church due to its perceived moral compromise.

For evidence of this dynamic, I point you to declining Catholic affiliation among Church deserters who disapprove of Catholic hierarchical complicity in concealing child sex abuse.
 
Do you think watching pornography once is different from murder? Both require confession, but one is materially more damaging and urgent in the corporeal sense.

The priest can also step out of the confessional and directly observe the individual, record a licence plate on a vehicle, or call the police.
 
Confession has different terms in different regions. Our regional nomenclatures may be different. In Canada, it is: reconciliation, penance and peace, confession.

I used penance aw shorthand for the sacrament in full.
 
alphawoman said:
The priest can also step out of the confessional and directly observe the individual, record a licence plate on a vehicle, or call the police.
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I am amazed that you even suggested such a thing. The first time that happened would be the last time that priest would be hearing confessions.
 
alphawoman said:
A crime doesn’t have to be committed for confession to be required and a priest to intervene. The sin of anger has many gradations, which can tip into mortal sin depending on the intent of the offender. A priest would logically seek further information if he has heard a deeply concerning confession or clarification.
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Yes, if a priest has special concerns he can ask further questions of the penitent. But all that has to stay within the confessional.
A confession can also pertain to a previous crime and an intended crime. In that case, the priest has more reason to believe someone would be harmed.
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Obviously, if a penitent intends to commit a serious sin, absolution must be denied. Though the seal still applies in any case where a person had the intention to confess sins, even if his dispositions were not sufficient to be absolved, since if it did not then penitents would fear that their sins could be exposed if the priest judged them impenitent.
alphawoman said:
I’ve provided moral justification—that existence in the civil state requires adherence to its laws, and failure to adhere to them causes harm to victims and society.
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Again, there is no law requiring self-reporting.
Failure to sanction crimes reduces the cost of crime and increases the societal incidence of crime, not just for Catholic offenders, but others. Restitution is not provided absent punishment, and deterrence is hampered.
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The non-prosecution of a single individual, especially for a crime that is secret, does not substantively effect the state of law and order.
Failure of the Church to support the civil prevention of violent crime also does injury to the perceived moral authority of the church, which compromises evangelization and adherence to its doctrines. Now we are considering a situation where not only the soul of an offender is in the balance, but also the souls of marginal Catholics or prospective converts, who will not seek recourse to the Church due to its perceived moral compromise.

For evidence of this dynamic, I point you to declining Catholic affiliation among Church deserters who disapprove of Catholic hierarchical complicity in concealing child sex abuse.
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Actual moral compromise would by definition be worse than perceived moral compromise.
 
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We are operating in different plains, conversationally. You are referring to existing canon law, which prevents such an act. I am referring to a normative state in which exemptions are made for disclosure of confessions concerning violent crimes.
 
Crime is perceived in its aggregate state by the citizenry, and ecclesiastical conditions which lower the civil cost of serious crime for a large minority of the population does create a material change in overall crime.

For the sake of this discussion, let’s take as given that canon law is as it is—the confessional seal can’t be broken. We can pull the citation if needed; we all accept that. What we’re discussing is whether that is optimal in all circumstances.
 
I’m suggesting actual and perceived compromise overlap. Abetting crime is morally repugnant.
 
Absolutely secret confession puts people in the same condition vis a vis the state as if confession didn’t exist.

In any case you’re still missing the point. In order to make absolution dependent on turning oneself in, one would need to prove a moral obligation on the part of individual penitents to do so. One individual criminal not getting caught doesn’t substantively affect the state of law and order, so such an obligation does not exist.
 
I’ve just provided the justification for why exactly what you state is so. The difference in conclusions we are reaching is that you either don’t accept the argument of a cumulative shift in incentives to commit crime or participate in Catholicism, or the relative weights you assign to the value of a single confession and the cumulative impact are dramatically different from mine.
 
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