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

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I found the original article. Satan could not have done a better job personally dictating it, though I have no doubt that he was behind it. It is a crying shame Catholics can be so quick to help his evil work of spreading lies. At least they have the privacy of the seal of confession in which to address sins of gossip and slander.

The truly sad part is that this attack against the Holy Eucharist (for that is what it ultimately is), only serves to endanger children, making people slow to respond to legitimate situations where a priest or bishop did fail in his duty.
 
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And? If he was willing to disclose information made in confession I’d argue he probably shouldn’t be hearing anymore confessions.
 
adgloriam said:
Read through the evidence of the Royal Commission. There’s proof some knew outside of confession.
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Exactly my point. Evidence can exist for the positive, in this case, that which was made known outside of confession. This can even be to the point of reasonable proof. What cannot happen is proving the negative. For example, how could you prove here that no one discussed asparagus with you last week?
 
I am a lawyer in the United States. There are many, many hotlines to call if you have questions such as these. Calling them does not guarantee that you will not end up in serious trouble with the law or the bar, or riddled with guilt if you fail to prevent some crime from occurring.

I think the hotlines are good, but attorney-client privilege in the USA can be a very difficult issue.
 
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pnewton said:
For example, how could you prove here that no one discussed asparagus with you last week?
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Don’t play logics with me, my math degree holds over all kinds of logic.

You take their word for it, on bonna fides, if they are credible and no proof to the contrary is produced. simple as that. (So don’t play captious rhetoric with the thread readers please.)

In case of financial crimes the burden of proof can get inverted and the accused is responsible to produce evidence of innocence, but in those cases a “paper trail” needs necessarily to exist - a whole other matter that can’t be compared to oral testimonies.
 
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adgloriam said:
Don’t play logics with me, …So don’t play captious rhetoric with the thread readers please.)
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For charity sake, you write your posts. I will write mine. If I violate the rules, then report that. I do not wish to be be bullied, controlled, or dictated to.

I was not “playing”. What I said was true, and represents a real problem of priests today, as it was in the day of McCarthyism, and was in the day of the Salem trials.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
This archbishop is saying that he feels that compelling priests to disclose is wrong because when you are in the confessional, you are supposed to be able to speak with God in the person of the priest without having to worry that others will find out what you say, and also that compelling priests to disclose confessions will discourage people from going to confession. Seems reasonable to me.
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Well said. Roger Ebert wrote something similar in his review of the 1995 movie “Priest”:

Instead of taking the time to explore the sexuality of the two priests in a thoughtful way, “Priest” crams in another plot, this one based on that old chestnut, the inviolable secrecy of the confessional. Father Greg learns while hearing a confession that a young girl is being sexually abused by her father. What to do? Of course (as the filmmakers no doubt learned from Alfred Hitchcock’s “I Confess”) he cannot break the seal of the confessional - a rule that, for the convenience of the plot, he takes much more seriously than the rules about sex. This dilemma also figures in his anguished monologue to Jesus. Once again, the church is used as spice. (Can you imagine audiences getting worked up over the confidential nature of a lawyer-client or a doctor-patient relationship?)
 
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TheAmazingGrace said:
Can you imagine audiences getting worked up over the confidential nature of a lawyer-client or a doctor-patient relationship?
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Those have been used as plot points as well. They all work because all three privileges exist for good reason, and for the total common good.
 
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If someone tells me that they have molested a child am I obliged to report them to the police? There are a number of reasons why I wouldn’t. Like, I think they are lying. I am not obliged to believe everything that I am told. Why would a secular government suddenly ascribe to the Catholic belief of a priest that the priest must consider what he hears in the confessional to be true enough to grant absolution? Double standard.

A priest may not even be seeing a penitent face to face. How in the world could there be any justification for holding a priest criminally accountable for something that someone confessed to him when the priest doesn’t have any evidence of the penitant’s guilt. The priest likely doesn’t even know who the penitant is.
 
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1Lord1Faith said:
If someone tells me that they have molested a child am I obliged to report them to the police? There are a number of reasons why I wouldn’t. Like, I think they are lying.
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Under US law, there are certain groups of people called “mandated reporters” who are required by law to notify authorities about any case where they have reason to believe a child is being abused or neglected. The laws vary from state to state. I think in some states, all citizens are “mandated reporters”. In other states, the “mandated reporters” tend to be people who work closely with children, such as teachers, social workers, child care providers, law enforcement, etc. So people should be aware of the law for their specific state.

I do not know what duty to report you might have under the law in countries other than USA.

Regardless of whether you are required to report by law or not, it would be a prudent course of action to report any such case to the police and let them sort out whether or not the person is lying, in order to protect children from harm. We see cases in the news all the time where children were being abused over the long term and people suspected the abuse but no one said anything or called the police.
 
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Breaking the seal of confession has much worse consequences that jail!

I don’t know about Australia, but in the US one can make an anonymous report, which seems like it would solve this dilemma. One can take steps to protect a victim without violating confidence.
 
guanophore said:
in the US one can make an anonymous report, which seems like it would solve this dilemma. One can take steps to protect a victim without violating confidence.
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A priest making an anonymous report about something he heard in Confession, without getting permission from the person confessing to report the information, is still breaking the seal of Confession, which means he has committed a serious sin for which he is accountable to God and also will be held accountable to his superiors if the report can be traced back to him.
 
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In Texas, all are obligated to report knowledge of child abuse. Failure to do so is a crime. This includes priests, and includes confession. So far, there has been no case to test it, though I do not doubt that we will see martyr priests in America soon.
 
If a parish is using anonymous confessionals, no priest could say with certainty who confessed what, even if he wanted to. In any case he is prohibited from disclosing any sin heard in the confessional. If the state pressures the Church on this, I can see anonymous confessions being made the mandatory norm.
 
JimG said:
If the state pressures the Church on this, I can see anonymous confessions being made the mandatory norm.
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My only concern with that, is I can see the old style confession being open to abuse of being monitored. I referred earlier to previous eras where societal norms were ignored in the fervor and fear surrounding communists and witches. We are too close to that again today, passing new laws against child sexual assault that would have seemed absurd before. It is a heinous crime, but it is hardly the only crime, and we have gone way past justice. I do not think any thing impossible in this climate.
 
Yes, anyone can wear a wire to confession, whether face to face or behind a screen. That too is a violation of the confessional, but there will probably be some such attempts at entrapment.
 
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