n February 20, California Democratic State Senator Jerry Hill, whose affluent, liberal-leaning district encompasses the San Francisco Peninsula and portions of Silicon Valley, introduced a bill to abolish legal protection for the Catholic Church\u2019s sacramental seal of confession, at least as regards confessions of child abuse.<\/p>\n
Specifically, the bill would remove an exemption for \u201cpenitential communications\u201d in an existing state law that designates more than forty categories of professionals\u2014clergy, physicians, teachers, counselors, social workers, and the like\u2014as \u201cmandated reporters\u201d who face criminal penalties if they fail to report sexual and other mistreatment of children that they learn about in their professional capacities. Currently, the law carves out a narrow exception for information obtained during the Catholic sacrament of Penance and other religions\u2019 similar penitential rituals, which bind clergy to secrecy. If the California legislature enacts Hill\u2019s bill, that exception would disappear\u2014and Catholic priests, bound by canon law not to disclose the contents of a confession, could face criminal prosecution and imprisonment for refusing to comply. \u201cThe law should apply equally to all professionals who have been designated as mandated reporters of these crimes\u2014with no exceptions, period. The exemption for clergy only protects the abuser and places children at further risk,\u201d Hill said in a statement accompanying the proposed measure, SB-360.<\/p>\n
The Catholic doctrine of the seal of confession dates back to the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which mandated that Catholics confess their grave sins to a priest via the sacrament of Penance. The latest formulation of the church\u2019s Code of Canon Law states: \u201cThe sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason.\u201d The penalty for any priest who divulges anything heard in confession\u2014or even a penitent\u2019s identity\u2014is automatic excommunication. Eastern Orthodox churches do not have such an explicit rule, but they do have the same expectation of absolute secrecy surrounding sacramental confession. Since the Middle Ages it has not been unusual for priests to risk\u2014and occasionally endure\u2014martyrdom from secular authorities rather than break the seal, as did several priests executed by militant secularists during Mexico\u2019s Cristero uprising of the 1920s and the Spanish Civil War a decade later. Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s 1953 film, I Confess, involves a priest who risks conviction for a murder he did not commit after the true murderer confesses the crime to him and he is bound not to reveal it.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, although America is historically Protestant, it has also historically recognized the binding power of the Catholic seal of sacramental confession.<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n California may soon pass a law requiring priests to break the seal of confession.https:\/\/t.co\/vwHAf0KYJT<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 First Things (@firstthingsmag) March 18, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n