What we need now is a leadership, at this point, that eschews populism but that calmly and deliberately, in the midst of competing voices pushing a variety of agendas, does what has to be done.
And recognises too what can and can’t be done.
I wonder whether Alan Shatter, the Justice Minister, whose bailiwick this is, has thought through the implications of his intention to force priests to break the seal of Confession, in the interests of child protection.
There are all kinds of situations where client confidentiality demands certain in-built protections.
But the Seal of Confession is of a different order altogether – as the standard of secrecy protecting a confession outweighs any form of professional confidentiality or secrecy.
Priests do not just regard it as an absolute duty not to disclose anything that they learn from penitents in the confessional.
They know that if they reveal anything they have learned during confession to anyone, even under a threat of their own death or that of others, that they would be automatically
excommunicated.
A priest cannot break the seal to save his own life, to protect his good name, to refute a false accusation against himself, even to save the life of another.
In a criminal matter, a priest may encourage a penitent to surrender to authorities.
However, this is the most a priest can do.
We cannot directly or indirectly disclose the matter to anyone, civil authorities or anyone
else.
This very specific priest-penitent privilege is usually respected in law and without it a priest’s capacity to fulfil his ministry is inhibited.
In a famous Hitchcock film ‘I Confess’ (1953), a killer confesses a murder to a priest. In the event the priest was accused of the murder but the dilemma the film conveyed was that the priest couldn’t break the seal of Confession, even though his own life was at stake.
It is a measure of the vulnerability of the Catholic Church that part of the package of measures being contemplated by the civil authorities effectively amounts to a rejection of protection in law for what was always regarded as the sacred seal of Confession.
Has it all come to this?
Indeed it has all come to this; the church has brought this shaming on itself. It has shown itself to be unworthy of trust and incapable of trust. Any parent who leaves their child alone with a priest needs to think very, very carefully indeed. It has indeed come to this.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant. Kudos, Ireland.
ReplyDeleteThere is no question that the Catholic church has been raping children for decades, covering it up, lying about it, and ignoring the victims. Its worse in Ireland than in a lot of places.
They can't be trusted to protect society from their own pedophiles, and for a long time, the laws of the land allowed the church to get away with that. The church shamelessly, recklessly, sinfully abused that power - not as individuals, but as a coordinated, organized whole.
That makes them an organized crime empire as much as a religious institution.
They should start losing benefits, like "the loophole of confession", since they have long lost respect and trust.
Pedophile priests proved that confession gave them the capability to rape children as long as they ran to confession afterwards. Some in the US in Philadelphia had sex with children in confessional. That's convenient. If you close that loophole, and the priest knows that he has to confess or go to hell after he rapes a child, he has a big dilemma.
Brilliant solution, Ireland.
Pedophiles - want forgiveness from God? Go to prison on earth. You don't get the benefit of God's forgiveness for free. Priests - want to hide your pedophile priest friend? You go to jail, too.
Enact the law. Let's hope the US follows suit. The Catholic church concealed child rape for at least 60 years. Let's let the government shut down the pedophile protection practices.
Yet the fact remains that a child is far safer in the hands of a Catholic priest than in the hands of the average civil school teacher, male or female. A child is more than ten times more likely to be abused in a state-run school than in a church-run school.
ReplyDelete