That drug use thing is a massive stretch of the words “cause harm to yourself or others”. That clause is - to my knowledge - used exclusively to mean things like abuse, assault, murder, or suicide.

Please provide a source of that actually happening or a legislative or judicial ruling that supports that idea at all.

And really? Most of the Lutheran church specifically agrees with breaching the seal of confessional, and specifically supports mandated reporting.

While there is some support for absolute secrecy of a private confession, Lutheran history and the Book of Concord do not support the concept of keeping a confidence if it risks the ongoing abuse or death of a child or requires the pastor to violate civil or criminal laws designed to protect children from abuse.

While Scripture discourages gossiping and speech designed to damage the reputation of another, keeping a confidence “is not an absolute, especially when others are being harmed or may be hurt."

Yes, just as a lawyer would have to do when questioned about a client. Anything they did outside of attorney-client privledge they must speak about, it’d be the same for the clergy. It’s not an issue for lawyers, so I don’t see an issue for the clergy.

Is this intentionally bad faith, or just a deep misunderstanding of the legal system?

If a lawyer is a witness to a crime that their client committed, and is involved in proceedings related to that crime, they have to recuse themselves from representing the client. They literally cannot be that person’s lawyer anymore. They keep all information already held under attorney client privilege, but any future information is no longer protected.

They also have the bar - a legal association specifically dedicated to ensuring that lawyers all comply with the law. If they break the law in the course of their duties, the association exists to prevent them from ever practicing law again.

It’s not perfect, but it’s something.

It’s not the same for the clergy. A priest can be witness to whatever, and there’s no legal obligation to stop being the person’s priest or hearing their confessions. But there is a tremendous amount of evidence that clergy associations have been exclusively dedicated to ensuring that clergy never face the law at all.

Not all laws are good or just.

And yet, it’s effectively a universal truth that child sexual abuse is the gravest offense imaginable, and a very common result of religious secrecy is covering up child sexual abuse.

Slippery slopes are fallacies for a reason. We can all fucking agree on a law against child sexual abuse being fair and just. When it comes to anything else, we can have that conversation.

No, they only don’t have to report confessions. They’d still be legally required to report if they discover crimes happening, like other clergy committing crimes.

Except for the fact that there’s a legal loophole in place for confession. If you subpeona a priest who saw someone commit a crime, all he has to say is “I cannot testify, it is against my religion.”

Do you understand the issue? The priest can’t ever say “I can’t testify because I heard it in confession” because that in and of itself is a breach of the seal of confession.

So he can only say “I cannot testify” and we all have to leave it at that.

So that paedophiles don’t stay away from confession, so that priests can tell them that god wants them to go to the police as penance. Noone is helped when paedophiles instead keep their mouths shut.

There are specifically no systems in place for that to happen, or indication that that actually does happen. There is specifically every indication that churches often cover up these crimes as a matter of habit. Without mandated reporting, we can literally never know what happened.

There is very little evidence of societal benefits or needs when it comes to secrecy in confession. There are benefits and needs when it comes to secrecy with mental health professionals, and yet they often are mandated to report these crimes anyway, because the risks of not reporting far outweigh the benefits of secrecy.

Germany is behind the times and most of the EU on this one:

In 15 Member States (Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom) reporting obligations are in place for all professionals.

In 10 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Greece, Finland, Italy, Latvia, Portugal and Slovakia) existing obligations only address certain professional groups such as social workers or teachers.

In Germany, Malta and the Netherlands, no reporting obligations were in place in March 2014.

This isn’t “the US is the exception” for once.

I’ve heard in the US you can get arrested for telling your therapist that you took drugs which is insane.

Source? I have literally never heard that.

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To be fair, lawyers get to avoid this (I assume).

Lawyers don’t get to avoid this. They need to, in fact they are forced to, otherwise the entire legal system fails. There is no justice without privileged defense. That’s literally in the fifth amendment.

The desire for clergy not to be mandated reporters goes in the opposite direction from what you suggest. The slippery slope here doesn’t lead to breaking freedom of religion, it leads to a religious organization hiding crimes whenever they want.

Leaving an exception in for the confessional when it comes to mandatory reporting would allow any religious group that had a mandate for secrecy to say, ‘We don’t have to report anything.’”

Confession requires penitance. They must confess and repent to God, but there is no reason why the penitance for Catholic confession can’t involve actually fucking answering for your crimes.

This is completely accurate, and yet so many responses are pretending it’s not.

A mandated reporter is a person who is required by law to report crimes, typically if they know or suspect a child or vulnerable adult has been or is at risk of being abused or neglected

Mandated reporters have to report child abuse. Full goddamn stop. No, it doesn’t matter if it’s in the past, why the fuck would that change anything?

These people really think that it’s okay not to report pedophilia? Why? Because the pedophile confessed to inarguably one of the worst crimes imaginable, and promised not to do it anymore?

You think a therapist wouldn’t report that because their patient said they won’t do it anymore? Did they pinky swear?

They’re also usually relying on secrecy and speed. The way they quietly stopped and surrounded that innocent grad student, masked up, and kidnapped her so smoothly was terrifying.