What can a priest say about Confession?

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Glennon_P

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This is not a question about whether a priest can reveal anything regarding a specific Confession; clearly the answer for that question is no.

However, is a priest allowed to reveal if certain sins have ever been confessed to him? For example, if I asked a priest, “Have you ever had someone confess to murder?”, and not inquiring about any identifying information - church, date, etc. - would they be able to say yes or no?
 
They can, they just can’t give information away that would identify the penitent. So for example, a priest could say, “Yup, someone has confessed murder to me before.”, but a priest could not say, “The guy who killed Sally Sue confessed the crime to me.”
 
Yes, they can say (and they do), “I hear such and such a sin all the time in the confessional.” I’ve heard priests preaching against pornography who will say they hear it all the time and so don’t be ashamed to come confess. They just can’t say, “Mr So and So confesses this all the time.”
 
One priest I knew ,said he could not say anything about what sins people confess. He said only one sin as that sin was made public in the media but he would not say who the person was (as expected) even though media and the legal procedure mentioned the name of the person.
 
May also need to be careful here. Suppose the following odd scenario.
  1. Ask priest if anyone ever confessed sin X.
  2. Clandestinely note penitents next day.
  3. Repeat same question next day.
A yes answer, even generic restricts the possibilities to 2 above. Probably a wierd scenario, but today, that could happen.
 
I’ve talked to clergy in the DC area. It’s not that weird - plenty of Catholics with security clearances and sure someone would like dirt on them.
 
I see what you are saying, but if the question is generic; “Has anyone ever confessed X?” Then the response, if yes, doesn’t denote that one particulate penitent has confessed it, just that the priest has heard it. To determine if one specific person had committed X you’d have to literally follow up each time that person went to confession and ask; “Did you hear X yesterday?”, or something to that effect. I don’t think any priest in his right mind would fall into a trap like that.
 
Glennon_P said:
However, is a priest allowed to reveal if certain sins have ever been confessed to him?
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I imagine he would need a good reason to disclose that, or anything about confessed sins.

I recall a lecture by Archbishop Charles Chaput – I had to look it up and that took a few minutes – the 2016 Tocqueville Lecture on Religious Liberty, at Notre Dame University.

Among many other things, he talked about how the sins people confess have changed over the 46 years that he had been hearing confessions. (I won’t mention here the sins he discusses, because it makes a lot more sense in the context of his lecture.) For him, confessions provide a sort of background information that helps him to understand social and political changes in the US (and much of the world).
 
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Our priest, when reassuring our RCIA group that Confession was not something to be feared, said, “I don’t like listing specific sins that I have heard, but rest assured that I have heard every single sin that you could possibly imagine. And I do mean everything.” So it sounds like maybe they could give a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer? Although I greatly respected his unwillingness to do so.
 
The danger of this is that if a priest says something like “a person came to me the other day and confessed to x” - that person (or another who confessed the same thing) might well be in their congregation making them feel more than a bit awkward.
 
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I think the bigger danger is that even if the priest just says he hears X sin confessed all the time, when he has literally heard it 50 times in the past month and doesn’t remember any of the 50 confessions where it was confesed, but one person who confessed it is sitting in the third row, that one person is going to get all self-conscious and feel like all eyes are on him because he will only be thinking of the fact that he himself confessed X and not be thinking about how 49 other people also confessed it and the priest, if he had any idea who each penitent was, has totally forgotten by the time he is 1 minute out of the confessional and maybe only remembers that he tends to hear X a lot.
 
I’d imagine a priest can speak in general terms, but prudence would call him to decide not to, unless he were not a parish priest then he may do so if the Holy Sprint directed him so. For instance if he is a giver of retreats, or a lecturer or in education especially of other priests then it may well be prudent to speak, still in general terms of sins confessed. So I’d guess then what is prudent for one priest, is not so for another and likewise in different situations and best dealt with in each and every situation as it comes to mind, no doubt with the assistance of the Holy Spirit.
 
If they are ordered to testify, then I believe they can be charged with obstruction of justice if they withhold information.
 
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laylow said:
If they are ordered to testify, then I believe they can be charged with obstruction of justice if they withhold information.
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The privacy of the Confessional is protected by the First Amendment (at least in the US). There have been attempts to breach it, and those attempts were shot down in court.
 
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laylow said:
If they are ordered to testify, then I believe they can be charged with obstruction of justice if they withhold information.
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At least in the US, most states privilege communications with clerics the same way communications with attorneys are privileged. No prosecutor is going to attempt to compel a priest to testify about a confession.
 
Hmmm. It seems like there should be cases that are outside of the protection of the 1st Amendment.

For example, if a certain religion demands that you kill anyone caught committing adultery, this command does not supersede Federal murder laws.
 
LawyersGunsAndMoney said:
At least in the US, most states privilege communications with clerics the same way communications with attorneys are privileged. No prosecutor is going to attempt to compel a priest to testify about a confession.
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Correct. There are several “privileges” recognized under US law, including a defendant’s communications with their spouse, with their clergy person (doesn’t have to be Catholic or a priest, although Catholic priests are often under the privilege because of the confessional seal), with their doctor, and with their lawyer. Where conversations are protected by privilege, then the spouse, clergy, doctor and lawyer can’t be compelled to reveal them, nor can other evidence about them (like a wiretap recording) be used in court.

So no, priests in USA can’t be forced to tell about what they heard in confession or even that they heard a confession.
 
laylow said:
Hmmm. It seems like there should be cases that are outside of the protection of the 1st Amendment.

For example, if a certain religion demands that you kill anyone caught committing adultery, this command does not supersede Federal murder laws.
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Huh? A religious precept is different from a private spiritual counseling conversation with your clergy. Also, if you committed murder, the prosecution would need to find the usual evidence of murder such as DNA, witnesses, evidence of your shoes or tire tracks being at the scene, victim’s blood on your clothes, a murder weapon etc.

A general precept from your church or gang that you should kill adulterous people doesn’t have much to do with whether you yourself committed the murder or not, nor is anyone saying that a Church teaching which clearly violated a law is okay. Evidence of such a Church teaching, if it existed, would likely be available from sources outside the confessional or (for non-Catholics) spiritual counseling context.

Privileges are about introducing evidence of certain private communications, only. The law recognizes that there are certain situations where a person needs to be able to have private communications in order to function in life.

By the way, most “murder laws” are state, not Federal.
 
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