You’ll notice the Royal Commission’s Final Report Recommendations did not include a recommendation to abolish the seal of confession.
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It did recommend that if a person confesses pedophilia, absolution should be withheld until they report themselves, which I think is a good recommendation and what I think almost all priests would do anyway, and does not break the seal.
What is almost always ignored in this debate is the fact that confession is hearsay (often even “double-hearsay”) and so inadmissible in any just legal system.
Parents, friends, police, doctors, counsellors and others have no “seal of confession” yet apparently can’t catch the more illusive pedophiles as victims are too ashamed to report and pedophiles are not remorseful enough to report themselves.
The assurance of the seal of confession offers an extra and unique opportunity for victims and perpetrators to “tell/confess” and the priest the opportunity to convince the person to report the abuse.
If the Pope allowed the seal of confession to be broken, even once, the seal of confession would be destroyed forever.
No second pedophile would ever trust a priest’s seal of confession again, no second child would either. Neither would any of us.
Would you burn down the entire Amazon to catch one single pedophile?
That’s what’s at stake here.
Parents, friends, police, doctors, counsellors and others have no 'seal of confession' yet apparently can’t catch the more illusive pedophiles.
I have come to realise confession is the spiritual Amazon of not only Catholics but non-Catholics and even athiests.
When people want priests to break the seal of confession, how do they logistically intend this to happen?
They’re asking a priest to break the seal of confession by telling the truth to a human court by lying to his promise to God, about what a child molester, and therefore almost certainly a liar, whom he never physically saw (confession is usually from behind a grill) and therefore may be someone completely different, to tell the truth about something that could be a lie, and could even be an astute pedophile pretending to be someone else. Such “evidence” would be inadmissible.
Worth it to save one child?
You couldn’t even be sure you caught the right person.
You could be sure you would have destroyed the spiritual Amazon for billions of others, especially children, and for the rest of history.
- Twitter: @frbrendanelee
