Strange Penance?

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For the past few months I have not seen or heard from a friend of mine. I’ve been asking around,trying to find out where to she disappeared to. Her friends told me she has not been in school, and her phone has been off. I called her home, and no one answered my call.

Finally I sent her a letter. I received an email from her father saying she is banned from all human contact.

I was scared to respond to her father, so I didn’t.

Then a few days ago she shows up at my house, crying. I invite her in and ask her why she dropped off the fact of the earth and missed 4 months of class.

She tells me that the priest at her church made her tell her entire family that she had sex with her boyfriend after confessing it as her penance. This resulted in her father hitting her, selling her car, and hitting her boyfriend. I later found out from other kids that the priest from that church always makes telling their parents the penance for any sex related sin.

Is this common? Should a priest do this? Can a priest really tell you to confess your sins to your parents? Are they not private to you and god?
 
It is my understanding that a priest may encourage a penitent to disclose his sin to others (parents, police, etc.) but he cannot compel the penitent to make such a disclosure as part of his penance.

This subject is discussed by Jimmy Akin, here.
 
Todd_Easton said:
It is my understanding that a priest may encourage a penitent to disclose his sin to others (parents, police, etc.) but he cannot compel the penitent to make such a disclosure as part of his penance.

This subject is discussed by Jimmy Akin, here.
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I hope someone can psot a section of canon law to cover this.

By the way - I must commend the girl’s faithfulness to God in obeying the priest. I’m sure she had a real good idea what might happen. It took courage and a real Love of Christ to put herself through this.

Peace
James
 
AndrewA said:
For the past few months I have not seen or heard from a friend of mine. I’ve been asking around,trying to find out where to she disappeared to. Her friends told me she has not been in school, and her phone has been off. I called her home, and no one answered my call.

Finally I sent her a letter. I received an email from her father saying she is banned from all human contact.

I was scared to respond to her father, so I didn’t.

Then a few days ago she shows up at my house, crying. I invite her in and ask her why she dropped off the fact of the earth and missed 4 months of class.

She tells me that the priest at her church made her tell her entire family that she had sex with her boyfriend after confessing it as her penance. This resulted in her father hitting her, selling her car, and hitting her boyfriend. I later found out from other kids that the priest from that church always makes telling their parents the penance for any sex related sin.

Is this common? Should a priest do this? Can a priest really tell you to confess your sins to your parents? Are they not private to you and god?
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Re: the comments I bolded. How old is your friend? Did her father actually say “banned from all human contact”?There is more to be concerned about here than just the issue of her penance. Your friend sounds like she needs protection from her father. And that priest needs to know the violent results of his penance. I would hope she could talk to another priest (or nun, or teacher) about the situation.
 
my friend is 17. But she attends a really really small catholic school of 8 students, that it is half home schooling. it is not uncommon for children to not show up and do their work at home in that group. And yes, she was literally banned from leaving the house to see non-family members.

what can I do to help her?
 
You might want to call social services or the police… That is some pretty serious stuff. I am not really sure what else you could do.

I have to say, this priest just really wasn’t thinking or perhaps wasn’t aware of the situation… It seems to me that telling on yourself to someone else like that shouldn’t be part of the penance, otherwise why bother to have private confession to begin with?
 
AndrewA said:
Is this common? Should a priest do this? Can a priest really tell you to confess your sins to your parents? Are they not private to you and god?
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Bizarre. I know of a similar case. My two eldest nephews went to confession to confess a certain sin; part of their penance was to tell their parents. They only told their dad, who totally understood.

Anyway, in my opinion, what that priest did practically broke the seal of the Confessional. Maybe what the priest did wasn’t intended out of malice, but it’s still overstepping by far.

We can report this to the local bishop. I’ll be happy to help you figure out who to complain about this to exactly, and I’ll help you draft a letter. It’s not going to help your friend at this point, but we should patch up leaks before the whole ship will sink. I can find the contact info for the right person if you let me know which is your Diocese (no need to tell me the name of the priest or the parish, I’ll just leave blanks in the letter that you can fill up; also they don’t have to know your friend’s name, but it’s a good idea if you put your name in there because people tend to ignore anonymous complaints, I know from personal experience). Please message me privately with this info if you’d like me to do this for you.

Horrible. This is no way to encourage people to go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which is already being forgotten. Absolutely horrible.
 
I’m going to try and get ahold of her, and see what she wants. I know her well and this is the first time I have seen bruises on her.
 
AndrewA said:
my friend is 17. But she attends a really really small catholic school of 8 students, that it is half home schooling. it is not uncommon for children to not show up and do their work at home in that group. And yes, she was literally banned from leaving the house to see non-family members.

what can I do to help her?
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Where is this school located? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
 
It sounds like the priest may be doing an overkill. If a penitent confesses something that the priest feels may be dangerous to the penitent, the priest can require that the penitent tell someone.

I don’t know the age of the person in the OP. If it was a case of a younger teen and the priest felt that she could be exploited or abused in anyway, he may have included the disclosure to the parents as a penance. Of the priest may fear that the girl may become pregnant and then the issue becomes more complicated. But the confessor has to be very careful when suggesting self-disclosure, because not all parents respond kindly.

There is a difference between disclosure and revealing a confession. If the priests tells, he is breaking the seal of confession. If you tell, you are not breaking the seal of confession. In that case it is disclosure. There is no canon law for these situations other than to use common sense.

THERE ARE MANY FACTS THAT THE OP HAS NOT POSTED AND SHOULD NOT POST AS THEY ARE MATTERS OF THE CONFESSIONAL. It is different if the girl herself were sharing.

All that being said, the father’s reaction is abusive. That concerns me more. It is one thing to consequence your children and another to strike them. That is, if the story is true.

If this priest requires that the kids disclose these things to their parents. I would suggest that the kids do two things: abstain from sex and consult another priest.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
Formosus said:
You might want to call social services or the police… That is some pretty serious stuff. I am not really sure what else you could do.
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Formosus, that’s a good idea, but will Social Services help a girl who is 17? I was under the impression they only did that for smaller kids.

You can call the police as well, but that might just infuriate the father further. It can go from bad to worse.

Maybe family counseling is a better option? Want me to help you figure out who can do this for you?
 
I have never heard of anything like this. But the truth is that in the early church confessions were public. One can imagine just how embarrassing and disruptive public confession was in those days – especially for women who were confessing adulterous affairs and both men were in the congregation! But certainly if a theif steals money and asks forgivness he is also told to pay back the stolen money. Likewise a person who cheats on their spouse (or their guardian) has stolen something due the other - chastity and fidelity to their spouse/guardian. There is a justice in making one confess their sins to the offended party since the sinner is not the only one to suffer loss here.

I don’t have an answer for you except to say that its a delicate area and probably within the guidelines of the priest, But I would think that the fear of reprisals and shame would tend to make penitents afraid to come forward again if they ever had need of repentance at a future date. On the other hand - this culture in the USA I think often takes God’s Mercy for granted and to get to deep repentance shame and sorrow needs to be there. These days it seems that people have lost their sense of shame. There is so much sin coming from what is now almost a completely hedonistic culture that the “everyone is doing it” mentality is dominating our consciences.

I am surprised that this family would react as severely as they did. Are they American? This sounds more like a strict South American Catholic family or how American Catholics were 45-50 years ago.

James
 
The discussion of someone else’s confession on a public forum is probably not prudent, so this thread has been closed. If you have any further questions or concerns please contact Catholic Answers directly.
 
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