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

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No, with secret confession, there is zero practical incentive to accept civil sanctions. However, if absolution for violent crimes is contingent on acceptance of civil penalties, the incentives shift infinitely in favour of accepting civil punishment.
 
No. The incentives would shift infinitely in favor of not going to confession.

But I think that’s hypothetical, because I don’t think such people go to confession anyway.
 
Just to be clear, are you arguing that a single criminal evading punishment will have a substantial negative effect on society?
 
Jim, given that our faith presupposes the capacity of all individuals to be repentant, we can only assume that this is an important and accessed mechanism for grace.

Also, the incentive to access an infinite benefit (absolution for a single soul) is infinite in all circumstances by dint of its magnitude.
 
I am arguing from micro-foundations. Each individual potential criminal is a representative agent who perceives an individual cost and benefit of crime. But those individual behaviours are observed by others and exert a feedback loop that influences the relative costs and benefits of crime for others. (E.g. lower arrest rates lead to higher rates of crime)

Representative individual behaviours are multiplied on aggregate to create societal patterns of behaviour.

So, yes. 😃
 
It’s not a matter of canon law, but Divine law that prohibits the priest from breaking the Seal of confession. Divine law = God’s law that cannot be changed by human beings. It is not human positive law that is simply disciplinary but has to do with the nature of the Sacrament of Confession itself. Thus, a priest would be breaking the Seal to go and record the license plate of someone and report it. It would be one of the worst mortal sins a human being can commit because it is not simply an injustice to the penitent who has the right to expect absolute secrecy but a sacrilege.
 
That may be, but in most places confession lines are still pretty sparse. (I think my parish is somewhat of an exception.) Most people seem to delay confession. The risk of going to jail would just make them delay it even more. In short, turning priests into professional informers would have less than zero effect on the crime rate.
 
Not even to prevent a future crime can a priest reveal confessional matter. A classic example is if someone tells him he plans to put poison in the wine for Mass. The priest cannot use that information to save his own life or that of others.
 
The application of the divine sacrament is a human construct informed by divine revelation. It is possible that canon law hasn’t properly considered the divine character of confession, though it is probably a good approximation.

It’s important to remember that previous historical Catholic interpretations of confession involved public disclosure of sin, so th absolute requirement for the confessional seal could be an interpretive artefact.
 
I am remembering that, quite clearly, as I believe I have some education in the matter having studied theology and being a canon lawyer…
 
This is understood already in the discussion. We all agree what canon law currently stipulates. 🙂
 
You’re getting to abstract. Let me repeat the specific question, does a single criminal evading punishment will have a substantial negative effect on society?
 
Public disclosure was only required for sins that were already public. Not analogous.
 
Again, yes. Behaviours are interactive across indIviduals. We acknowledge that with the sin of scandal, so it’s not too abstract.

(But I do appreciate that my preferred way of expressing an argument may not be yours, so we can use a different nomenclature if that makes the discussion more productive and enjoyable.)
 
alphawoman said:
Again, yes. Behaviours are interactive across indIviduals. We acknowledge that with the sin of scandal, so it’s not too abstract.

(But I do appreciate that my preferred way of expressing an argument may not be yours, so we can use a different nomenclature if that makes the discussion more productive and enjoyable.)
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Explain how this mechanism works in the case of an unknown crime.
 
No, many of the sins we’re discussing have the potential to be public or quasi-public open secrets (e.g. child sexual abuse known in a parish but not openly discussed).

But point taken for more private matters. I’d have to look into that history more specifically.
 
Rising aggregate unsolved crime rates.

Also, wide disparities between rates of convicted crimes and actual crime rates (e.g. rape).
 
How does a single unsolved crime substantially affect conviction rates?
 
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Individual unsolved violent crimes are given considerable media coverage, which advertises to potential criminals that the cost of commission of that crime is low. Potential criminals, if they’re Bayesians, update their expectations of being caught and change their behaviour accordingly with the expectation of a lower likelihood of being caught.
 
Only a small percentage of unsolved crimes actually get a lot of media attention. If one potential media story were removed, another would be talked about instead.

And of course, there’s all sots of stories of criminals getting caught.
 
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