The Catholic Church has issued a warning to its clergy in Washington state: Any priest who complies with a new law requiring the reporting of child abuse confessions to authorities will be excommunicated.
https://www.newsweek.com/catholic-church-excommunicate-priests-following-new-us-state-law-2069039
Congratulations. You fell for propaganda by stupid framing.
This is not actually about child abuse per se. It’s also not about “warning” priests.
This is a simple and factual reminder: Confessions are part of a protected sacrament and the seal of confession is absolute and always has been (or at least for nearly a millenium). To violate it means excommunication.
I wonder if you would react with the same outrage when this was a bar association reminding their lawyers of the disciplinary consequences of violating confidentiality agreements.
If the Bar Association told their lawyers not to report child abuse from their clients you would have a point. And confidentiality agreements are not going to protect child abuse. The Catholic Church is going out of its way to protect child abusers in order to maintain their “reputation”.
Nearly 1000 years of a confession’s confidentiality being absolute and the punishment for violating it being excommunication, is the exact opposite of “going out of its way”.
Ah, yes… tradition! Because the way things have been done is the way they must, should, will be done! Something being wrong is still wrong despite any length of time it has been done.
No, that just means they’ve been going out of their way to protect abusers for nearly 1000 years
Are you seriously arguing that child abusers should be protected by the church because of historical precedent? Why the fuck do you think any policy that hides child abuse is okay?
If you know a kid is getting hurt and you don’t say anything, you are a giant piece of shit. If you defend those that don’t say anything, you are a giant piece of shit. I hope you reflect on that before putting some imaginary sky daddy rules before a living and breathing child. The same ones he told you guys to protect and you decided to rape them instead.
No I’m arguing that it is well within your rights to argue for changes in that basically ancient church law. If that’s what you want to do, go one. I would actually agree.
But if you instead pretend that this is not about the seal of confession but hallucinate how the modern church is somehow going out of its way to protect child abuse (like a lot of commenters here do) you have completely lost the plot.
I’d argue, and this isn’t easy, the church can continue to use the rule. After all, it is from “God”. Who are we to define the rules. But any priest (and above) that doesn’t report it, is an awful human being. Stick to dogma, but accept the consequences of being a human. If a child is abused and you can stop it, pay the price to make it stop. Child is safe; you go to hell - fair deal. No mater what, someone is going to suffer. Make the “saintly” call. And make it known!
Then don’t? There is absolutely no reason society needs to obey objectively evil arcane rules because some dude who has absolutely no say in how we run society says we should.
I still have absolutely no idea why people would jump in to defend the churches right to keep CHILD ABUSE secret. It seems like you would either be afraid of getting discovered, or you have so little faith in your church that you’re afraid they’re going to get discovered.
I will tell you a secret: Not everything in the world is about tribes or team sports. I personally deem any organized religion as an abomination.
But when a “remember that the confession’s confidentiality is absolute, has been exactly like this for nearly a millenium and you are beholden to god’s/church laws first an foremost” (so the same unchanged statement as always) is reframed as the church somehow explicitly going out of its way to protect child abuse specifically people should actually notice that they are being manipulated.
I’m not afraid nor am I a member of any church. I am firm in my stance that there is no god. Small or little G. If you read my post again you will see that my point is, even if you are going to go to hell, you are obliged to report abuse. Again, report it. Fucking report it. If the cost is your eternal salvation, you will fucking report it.
They is my point. There is a cost to everything. No matter what you believe, be ready to pay it.
Next time, please read what someone says and not what you want to believe they say. The world would be much better that way.
The rule of shielding child molesters. I read exactly what you said and quoted it. Now I’m going to enjoy my weekend and not give you any more time to defend child molesters, because what the fuck.
Are you serious? I’m not defending them. I’m saying, if you have a religion based on stone-age ideas that are not allowed to change (because it’s a religion and God doesn’t really exist so he can’t talk to you) there is no coherent way you can change the rules. It’s not like a sports group. Only “God” can change the rules. Don’t change the rules. BREAK them. Ignore “God”.
I’m not sure why you are so insistent that I defend child molesters. You accused me of belonging to a church. I get the feeling this might be more true of you. Again, I believe in no god. I belong to no church. I defend no molester (child or otherwise).
I hope you have a nice weekend. I hold no animosity towards you. We are on the same side. We only disagree about semantics and human behaviour. Don’t be angry.
Confidentiality agreements do not cover illegal acts. Since you brought up the bar association, fun fact about that is that if you admit to say abusing a child to your lawyer not only is that not covered by attorney-client privilege the lawyer is obligated to inform law enforcement or face punishment by the bar association for failing to do so.
Small correction, a lawyer is only obligated if they believe there is a specific ongoing risk. It’s the difference between saying you committed a crime in the past and saying that you are going to commit one in future.
No.
If I tell my lawyer about a child I abused years ago he can do exactly nothing as there is no imminent crime to prevent that would allow him breaking confidality.
If I tell my priest the same applies.
If you want to change that, change the laws binding those people. But don’t pretend that the church is going out of its way to protect child abuse by in reality doing nothing and applying the same rule indiscriminately exactly like they did for a millenium.
No, you just don’t like their conclusion. The article explains what confessional is, which only alters your opinion of the case if you care more about the religious ‘right’ of a child fucker to talk about their child fucking in secret with someone who promised to not tell than you care about the wellbeing of the child victim.
Your lawyer line of reasoning is also based on a misconception: that attorney-client privilege universally extends to knowledge of child abuse, outside representing a client specifically on child abuse. This isn’t the case, there are states where attorney-client privilege doesn’t apply in this scenario. Bar associations in general also allow breaking confidentiality if they have reasonable belief that someone is going to be seriously harmed or killed.
While this is true it turns out that the United States isn’t bound by Catholic dogma. And the Church’s methods for handling this sort of problem have thus far been… questionable at best.
What an unbelievably stupid take.
A) Do you actually know what excommunication means? It’s not a permanent sentence to Hell. It’s a temporary separation from the Church that can be reversed after penance. Do you think a “time-out” is so unbelievably painful that it warrants protecting child abusers? If so, you are fucking disgusting.
B) You analogy ALREADY HAS agreed upon laws about violating confidentiality, including when the lawyer believes an extreme crime might be committed in the future. So no, we would not be reacting with outrage because we are not psychopaths.
It’s hard to state how stupid your post is.
Sorry, no amount of secret handshakes gets you out of being a terrible person for not reporting child abuse that you are aware of.
Who cares?
This is a simple and factual reminder: you’re arguing to protect child abuse. Shut the fuck up.
No, I am arguing for a church law established nearly 1000 years ago and upheld ever since that indiscriminately protects all confessions. If you want to argue for changing this (as you should) go along.
But pretending that this is about protecting child abuse or even -as multiple comments here do- hallucinating how the catholic church “goes out of its way” (by doing exactly the same aus in the last ~900 years) is insane.
And nobody cares about church law. It’s entirely irrelevant.
Doesn’t the bible say to obey the emperor and follow the law? So reporting abuse to the authorities shouldn’t be a sin since there’s a law compelling priests to violate the confessional for specific issues.