U.S. Diocese Asks Supreme Court to Reverse Decision Compelling Priest to Break Confessional Seal

[Havard]

A lawyer that I know and respect provided this analysis to the National Catholic Register for their story on this case. Religious freedom has never been my practice area, but from my experience as a lawyer and interested observer, I think he’s got it right on the money:

But Kniffin, who previously worked for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty on the Hobby Lobby and EWTN HHS mandate cases, said concerns that the Church’s religious freedom is being violated are premature.
“There is something unfair here, in that the [perpetrator] is dead, and the priest can’t really address the allegations,” he said. “But the courts’ rulings so far have not violated the Church’s religious liberties.”
He said the high court was right to allow the girl to testify about her own confessions.
“As a Catholic myself, I understand that nothing prevents me from sharing with another what I told a priest and the advice I received in confession,” he said.
Kniffin believes that the plaintiff’s argument that part of the girl’s confessions falls outside the priest-penitent privilege is a dead-end strategy.
“No court is going to parse a confession, and find that the second half of that sentence was just a description of a situation, so wasn’t really a confession of sin. No way.”

The real focus for the court, he said, will be whether the priest had knowledge of the abuse outside of the sacrament.
“If she told him elsewhere or if [the priest] was in another situation in which he saw something suspicious, then he has to report that under the law,” he said.
Still, Kniffin said he appreciates the Church’s sensitivity over where the district court might take the case.
“If all the communications were in the confessional, but the priest is still found to be a mandatory reporter,” he said, “then that is saying the priest has a legal duty to violate the confessional. And that can’t be the case.”

Read more: ncregister.com/daily-news/louisiana-supreme-court-raises-seal-of-confession-worries/#ixzz3D7uLrpyP

 

[jilly4ski]

A lawyer that I know and respect provided this analysis to the National Catholic Register for their story on this case. Religious freedom has never been my practice area, but from my experience as a lawyer and interested observer, I think he’s got it right on the money:

I would generally agree with your friend. I see where the Church is coming from and they are trying to use legal principles to get there. They Church was trying to prevent the testimony of the girl’s confession, because they are trying to implicate the priest for not reporting. The priest cannot confirm or deny anything that was said to have happened in the confessional or even that it happened and thus the girls statements can go unchallenged in the courtroom, besides trying to make her look like an unreliable witness (which is difficult to do in a child abuse case generally, much more so when the Church is involved). It is like not being able to confront your accuser (a value of the American justice system).

Now the priest can deny that anything was told to him outside of the confessional, but if the girl claims that something wasn’t a confession, but it was, again the priest cannot testify (and say that is was or wasn’t a confession) and the girl’s statements go unchallenged.

So it sounds like they were trying to prohibit the testimony based on rules of evidence which are complex and tortured.

Another issue is that it is not the courts purview to determine when the seal attaches and when it doesn’t, that would be the court regulating the internal affairs of the Church (the sacraments).