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
requiring the reporting of child abuse confessions to authorities
So they aren’t blatantly evil at least. Confessions remaining private is the foundation of how they work. Either way, the church loses on this one.
requiring the reporting of child abuse confessions to authorities
The actual law isn’t about confessions nor is it solely about CSAM. What Washington State has done is amend their mandatory report law by removing the exemption for Clergy.
“…has reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect, he or she shall report such incident, or cause a report to be made, to the proper law enforcement agency or to the department as provided in RCW 26.44.040.”
So yes, if a Priest (Catholic or not) hears a confession about CSAM they will be required to report. However if they hear about child *neglect *in a confession they have to report that as well.
Likely more meaningfully they ALSO now have to report those same things even if it isn’t during a Confession. For example if they witness a parent smacking their kid around in the parking lot.
It’s a necessary and correct change but it reaches a lot further than just the confessional.
It would seem the church is looking at it from the opposite direction: it reaches all the way into the confessional. Anything outside it should be fair game, it’s just the violation of the sacrament they object to - though I guess “go
confessturn your self in” could count as “cause a report to be made”.
Client-therapist privilege is foundational to how therapy works, but most states have laws saying a therapist must report admissions of abuse. I don’t see doctors rallying against those laws.
Still blatantly evil. Telling someone your crimes in confidence shouldn’t be a get out of jail free card.
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Let’s do the thought experiment where this is about muslims instead of christians…
How does that play out?
Call me crazy, but I don’t think any religion should be molesting children or hiding it for others.
Ill call you Thomas the Tank Engine if i care to call at all, and i was pointing out the selective exceptionalism at work.
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And for extra reading, learn about how the new pope covered up for priests that abused kids when he was a bishop:
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-853274
*Edit: removed the bad source. The Jpost article is good and includes several additional sources. For more: https://www.qwant.com/?q=+Robert+Prevost+abuse+cover+up
If you’re gonna bash the guy, at least use a credible source for christ’s sake.
Edit: 👍
the Will County Gazette is an imposter site, lacks transparency, and publishes false information. As a result, we rate them right-center, biased, and Questionable.
Right you are, updated accordingly. Thanks for the tip.
Fucking… of course he did 🤦♂️
Take away their tax exempt status and tax them as the huge profitable businesses that they are.
The legit response. And continue to arrest members of this self aggrandized gang for the crimes they commit.
So it was unclear to me from the article if it simply made priests mandatory reporters or if it went further. My understanding is that mandatory reporters don’t have to report past occurrences specifically. They only havecto report if it is currently happening or they suspect going to happen. If that is the case, it should be fine. Confession isn’t about what you are going to do.
It would be fine as long as it didn’t apply to confession where the seal of confession applies to all information. Any other time the priest can and should use any information available to him properly, and that could include that sort of reporting. But the seal is absolute. And honestly it’s protected by law, by the constitution and case law, so the Washington law is a hassle but completely toothless as it’ll be struck down the moment any challenges to it get brought to the right courts. The authors had to have known it was unconstitutional, so it was basically just them doing this for show, and to antagonize Catholics.
I agree it was for show. But question. You say the seal is absolute and protected by law and the constitution. That seems odd. Any source on that. I totally buy that case law has upheld it. But plenty of case law is beyond the actual written law. And since the constitution covered the separation of church and state, guaranteeing a specific part of a specific religion like confession seems out of place. Though it was common to all the religions they cared about, so they might have.
Priests are being made into mandatory reporters in Washington state. In Washington state, the mandatory reporting law appears to require reporting of all past events of abuse - it does not make reference to recent acts or imminent risk.
Sec. 2. (1) (a) When [any member of these groups] has reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect, he or she shall report such incident, or cause a report to be made, to the proper law enforcement agency or to the department
https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary/?BillNumber=5375&Year=2025
I was really hoping they’d be refusing to comply with unjust laws. If they wanted ways to look like the good guys, these days we’ve got plenty.
This isn’t really news. This has always been their stance. Priests will always urge the person to turn them self in for true repentance but they won’t ever break the confidentiality of confession.
There’s all this talk about how this will automatically excommunicate priests who violate the confessional and how it’s a grave sin and how the law is forcing them to sin and all that. I would understand the extreme pushback on this if this made a priest go to hell.
Here’s the thing: Excommunication is TEMPORARY!! The penalty for a priest violating the confessional and potentially saving the lives of many children is a temporary separation from the Church that can readmit the priest after a penance. They care more about themselves being away from the Church for a short period of time than for the lifetime of health and happiness of children. They make it sound like it’s the worst punishment you can give to a priest, on par with the punishment this gives to a kid who is harmed. It’s fucking sickening.
Arguably a priest who really cared would be morally obligated to speak up about a situation like the one being described, even if the consequence is excommunication.
I would understand the extreme pushback on this if this made a priest go to hell.
I wouldn’t. Religion shouldn’t get a fucking hall pass for arbitrarily bad shit because “we don’t want to go to the scary place we made up.”
readmit the priest after a penance
The priest actually has to repent - if he still thinks he did the right thing, he isn’t forgiven.
Agreed, and right now they are fighting tooth and nail against having to say something, so it sounds like they are repenting it already. They are being compelled by law, not by their own desire to be, you know, good people.
“Compelled by law” isn’t a sufficient justification for Catholics in this case - they’re supposed to die rather than reveal something that was said to them in confession, like Saint John of Nepomuk.
Yes, we all know that. This entire story is the church stating publicly they don’t consider compelled by law to be sufficient justification.
I’m talking about the punishment for breaking the church law is basically “take a time out for a bit” while the punishment for following church law is “child gets a lifetime of pain and trauma.” Priests are choosing their own personal connection to their friends rather than helping to prevent child abuse.
He could just lie. Priests are great at it.
Doesn’t apply to God’s forgiveness
Just make a new tax called the “Molestation Enablers Tax” that all institutions will pay if they opt out of reporting.
I support this state law, though I think it’s unlikely to directly have the intended effect and will probably just prevent people from confessing instead.
I don’t think people with a guilty conscience should have a way to clear their conscience other than behaving better and making up for their wrongs with better behavior.
At the same time, I get why the Catholic Church opposes the state law. And it’s one of the biggest reasons I’m against all Christian religions, Evangelicalism included: they’re more concerned about power than about people. And yeah, I think the Catholic Church’s stance on this issue is fucked up, just like most Christian stances on political moral issues are fucked up these days.
But the timing of this article, and the right wing motivations against Catholicism make it clear that this article is also more concerned about power than about people. The state law doesn’t stop child abuse or result in any more reporting of child abuse.
The way I see it, this article is actually right wing propaganda targeting the Pope because he supports Europe and Ukraine against Russia.
I also wonder logistically how it would work with the confessional booth. The church allows you to confess without the priest ever seeing your face or knowing your name. Would they be required to perform citizens arrests upon hearing of a crime?
though I think it’s unlikely to directly have the intended effect and will probably just prevent people from confessing instead.
That’s the thing, if you violate the confidentiality of confessionals then people simply won’t confess, and then you lose the avenue for a priest to try and convince someone to address their behaviour. Maybe that’s not very effective, but it’s more effective than not having it.
In line with your assessment of the article’s agenda, I have to question how much of an issue this even is. Like, the Catholic church has a long history with child abuse, but wasn’t that primarily about Priests abusing children in their parish, and the church protecting its priests? This is an accusation that Catholics themselves are a bunch of child molesters, which is not something I’ve seen any evidence in support of.
The same line of reasoning applies to mental health professionals. But even more so since a judge can order mental health care, but not confession. So why is it considered in one case to keep the avenue open, but not the other?
Well you already pointed at why: because you can be ordered into mental health care. You can’t be ordered into confession, it’s completely voluntary. Furthermore, priests do not have a legal duty of care; they are not registered professionals with professional standards to follow. Their role is defined by the church, not law and regulation.
In a practical sense, such a law isn’t going to work much anyway. It would be almost impossible to prove that a priest had been confessed to, short of someone admitting it directly. So the only way it works is if the child abuser wants to get one over on their priest - giving the child abuser another avenue to hurt someone else.
On the second point, many priests are good people. And they may follow the law simply gecause it exists. So the law could have some impact.
Well, glad I’m not catholic. Fuck these assholes
A curious question. Why isn’t everyone a mandatory reporter for child abuse? And assuming there is a good reason why, then why are doctors and such specifically seperated out. And do priests fit that same criteria?
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You’ve touched on a key point, I think. Doctors and other professionals have mandatory reporting because a) they are in positions of respect and trust within the community, and b) they are professionals, as defined in law, and have standards to uphold.
Priests definitely meet the definition of a), however b) is a bit of a sticking point: their role isn’t defined by law, but by the church. Furthermore, a court can order you to go to therapy sessions, but they can’t order you to go to confession - it’s completely voluntary. A therapist could tease out previous abuse, but a priest will only hear what the confessor wants to tell them about.
I’m in line with you in thinking that everyone should report abuse, but I think that a priest has more in common with an average person in this regard compared to a person working in a legally protected profession. There would be legal consequences for impersonating a therapist, but not for impersonating a priest.
It has to do with professional training and responsibility (duty of care), coupled with kids trusting them more and they are considered to have some para-custodial responsibility for children.
Priests aren’t entirely in that category, but they probably should be, the question is the relationship of the priests, ie a random priest who heard a rumor is very different from one who heard confession or tends the victim or abuser directly.
Also, you don’t want to empower random-ass people too much, people are absolute fucking morons and media will incite them to do something more moronic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
Inbred rednecks just danger incarnate, empowering them in any way is insane and will guarantee needess innocent victims.
So the new pope is off to a GREAT start, I guess 🤷
Pedophiles protecting pedophiles? Who would have thunk!
I read the headline and was prepared to support the church on this one (for once). Then I read the first paragraph of the article. I have never made a 180 on an opinion so fast. The fuck is wrong with the Catholic church and child abuse? Why is this a constant problem with them?
I agree and I agree. However, as a being that was indoctrinated and abused by the church, I still have to point to the ”Sacrament of Confession”, which… yeah… evil bastards.
Because that is what they are.
Imagine if any other type of organization had this sort of systemic problem with child abuse.
“Wow, there sure are a lot of pedophile employees at Apple Computer abusing their customers’ children.”
“Dang, the US Department of Transportation sure does have a kiddie diddler problem.”
“Holy shit, what’s the deal with all the abusive perverts working at Ronald McDonald House?”
Sounds absolutely bonkers, right‽
If any secular organization was having this kind of problem at scale, we’d all be calling for their blood. Yet the church gets a pass somehow. A few complaints, a few lawsuits, some big scandals, some negative press, but fundamentally nothing ever changes.
To hell with the church.
I mean, you joke, kind of, but a massive, MASSIVE amount of QAnon bullshit that drives current rightwingers in the US is literally nothing but inventing fake demonic pedophile cults and putting anyone they don’t like in these made up cults…
All so that they can demonize others, and what this functionally does is give these nutjobs an infinite well of whataboutisms to either shift a conversation about pederasty and child abuse in any christian church/sect … over to ‘the even worserer badderer people’…
…or just do something akin to a ‘no true scotsman’ and claim that anyone in any church who is a pedo or child abuser… well actually they’re not a real christian, they’re a secret demonic cult member who is embedded in the organization to both commit evil and also to discredit the church when they are exposed.
The purpose of a system is what it does, not what it claims to do.
These people invented what is essentially their own new religion, a religion dlc, which entirely serves as a mechanism to avoid and make impossible discussions of actual child sa, abuse, going on in the institutions they revere.
You mean like the Boy Scouts?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_Scouts_of_America_sex_abuse_cases
Do the Boy Scouts have a legally protected mechanism to talk with each other about their child fucking that I’m not aware of?
Like a Signal chat? Wtf are you even asking?
I’m talking about how Catholic priests can legally refuse to report child abuse revealed to them in confessional in most states, the subject of this post.
They do not. Your point of distinction is valid.
I think Boy Scouts have done a better job reforming than the Catholic church.
Recently maybe, but there was decades of abuse before that.
Yup, that’s what reforming means
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That’s affiliated with the church so it’s probably ok.
You’re out of date. A lot of scouts exist apart from churches now. Hypocritically, the churches are distancing themselves from scouts which have reformed.
I just looked it up off the back of your comment, things have changed since I was a scout.
Thanks for being open minded!
They do affiliate themselves with Christianity - maybe not Catholicism specifically, but the Catholic Church is hardly the only denomination of this cult that can’t keep their hands/mouths off of kids’ genitals.
Frankly if I ever had kids I’d have a gaggle of drag queens babysit before I let any even slightly religiously affiliated group near them.
Same here. Leary of any adult dude who wants to hang out with kids that don’t include their own child in the mix.
I think you should make some exceptions. Youth (including scouts) need mentors to develop skills. Just because my kids age won’t change that. I’ll still feel the Call. It’s very rewarding to see a kiddo grow. Totally redefined my concept of “legacy”.
I loved being a summer camp counselor so much that it was a factor in my decision to have kids. Almost became a teacher. Would you have been leery of me before I had the kids?
What about the CIA and the pentagon?
It’s a constant problem because its a cult that wants to protect its cult members. It finds no issue with indoctrinating kids, to the point where nobody batted an eye when they recently (like, in the past 10 years) decreased the age at which children go through the sacrament of Confirmation. The same sacrament that is meant to affirm your adulthood in the church, where you say, “I may have been told to practice this by my parents before, but now I’m an adult now and choose to practice it of my own volition.”
They do this when children are thirteen years old. Thirteen.
When I was fifteen I did not have the capacity to make this decision for myself. Now I have to live with the fact I’m on a list somewhere as an adult in the church. The Catholic Church is an evil institution that uses trauma for the purpose of coercion.
For a century now, the option has been at some point between 7 and 16, at the diocese’s discretion. I received mine around 16; 13 sounds like an outlier, to me.
I truly wonder what’s going through someone’s head when they downvote purely factual statements. I didn’t even give an opinion here.
I can explain what’s going through my head for you. I downvoted you because your purely factual statement seems to completely miss and is entirely irrelevant to my point – that coercing a child to declare themselves an adult in the eyes of a particular social group, to declare that they have the agency to consider such a thing that is supposed to be a LIFE LONG decision, is straight up wrong.
Doesn’t matter if it has been in place for a century, if age 13 is an outlier, or if you think 16 is old enough because that’s when you had to do it. It’s whack, and your justification is whack. I downvoted you instead of engaging because most of the time it’s not worth entertaining someone who justifies the cult I was indoctrinated into as a child, from which I had to spend many years deconstructing the hate for others – often the lowliest groups of individuals – that Catholicism had fomented in my child and adolescent heart. Forgive my harshness, but I’m not going to act like this thing that made me into a spiteful hateful kid – towards the exact groups of people that Jesus tells us to love the most – is a good thing.
Oh yeah, my bad for not including what it’s about. I’ll edit that back into the post.
The entire religion is based on shame and fear. The clergy take advantage of both.
This isn’t just Catholic church thing. It’s rampant in any religion, organization, hierarchy, etc. where the person on top of the totem pole demand obedience, they are insulated from outside accountability, and there is a culture of secrecy.
Go probe Ultra-orthodox Jews, Amish community, Quranic Schools. It’s rife with sexual abuse.
Is it a constant problem? How many child molesters are confessing in church? How many Catholics are child molesters?
The Catholic church’s history with child abuse is to do with Priests and the church covering for them. This is new spin, suggesting that Catholics as a whole contains a lot of child molesters, but I’ve not seen any evidence showing that.
To be fair, lawyers get to avoid this (I assume). This isn’t the same obviously, but if you view it from their frame of reference it is even more important. They must confess if they want to be “saved from God”, and similarly you should be honest with your lawyer to be saved from the court.
I don’t know where I stand on this issue. I obviously want them to be caught, and the religion is bogus, and the organization causes tremendous harm. However, if someone believes it’s true then this is pretty significant overreach and directly interferes with religious practice. They start with the crime most people will agree with, and then it sets a precident to go after other crimes in the same fashion. I’m too skeptical of the state to trust it’ll always be a good thing.
I feel like it’s fair to say that if you want god’s forgiveness you must accept mans judgement in cases of abuse. If their god’s salvation is worth less than however many years of prison they’d get, then that’s their choice. I don’t want them to be able to shrug off the guilt and continue the abuse with peace of mind just so they may also escape the punishment they think would otherwise await them after death.
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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.
It is not the opposite direction. It’s the same direction in a different system. Their religious system fails if confession isn’t only between you and the clergy.
I don’t think we want to be in a position where someone confesses that they aided with an illegal abortion, like they’re required to by their religion, and is arrested for it. Not all laws are good or just. If mandatory reporting for one crime is made, there’s no reason it shouldn’t expand to more/all crimes.
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.’”
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. It’d only be things said in the confession box that are safe.
I don’t like religion, and I really dislike organized religion, but I also hate giving the state power over people’s lives. We bend over backwards to get revenge in our society, to a massive detriment to ourselves. We give up so much just so we can get back at someone else. We need to stop this. Freedom is important. Yes, security is nice too, but how much security does this buy for the amount of freedom it could lose?
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Slippery slopes are fallacies for a reason.
Slippery slope is a type of fallacy. It isn’t fallacious always.
'in its barest bones, a slippery-slope argument is of the following form:
“If A, which some people want, is done or allowed, then B, which most people don’t want, will inevitably follow. Therefore, let’s not do or allow A.”
The fallacy occurs when that form is not fleshed out by sufficient reasons to believe that B will inevitably follow from A’
(https://intellectualtakeout.org/2016/03/not-every-slippery-slope-argument-is-a-fallacy/)
Saying that this would create a precident to include other crimes being required to be reported is not fallacious.
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.”
That’s just blatantly incorrect. They’re not required to report on stuff they’re told in confessionals and that’s all. They’re still required to report on crimes they witness, just like everyone else. Do you think lawyers are t required to report crimes they witness?
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.
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.
In an ideal world they could hear the confessional and check up on the victim. I’m sure this won’t always happen, but it may. If they’re required to report it, they’ll never be told, so can’t act on it.
I don’t like religion, and especially organized religion. However, this steps too far into a government that forcing it’s way into people’s lives that I don’t like.
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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.
Privledged information is protected, yes. Not other information.
They also have the bar - a legal association…
An association of legal professionals, not a legal association. It is private.
…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.
Sure, I’d advocate for something like that, though the clergy does have administration that regulates them also. You can argue they should be more strict, but it does exist.
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Personally, I think it goes back to the Catholic Church’s special status as its own sovereign country. They didnt just elect a Pope this week. They elected an absolute monarch. Even though that monarch’s territory is only .5 sqkm, it used to be much larger, and the Church literally has outposts everywhere indirectly subject to its rule.
And a key thing to understand is that the Church doesn’t use confession to hide crimes from just anyone. If some random Catholic confessed to a priest that he was diddling kids, you can bet that as part of the penance, the priest would tell that person to turn themselves in to the authorities. But we know what has happened when the confessor was a priest.
The Church was always super arrogant when it came to transgressions by its own people. To them, subjecting a priest to civil law makes just as much sense as subjecting an Italian to Australian law. When a priest confessed he was diddling kids, they would handle it in their own manner, without getting the local authorities involved.
That’s the real reason why this law is written the way it is. It’s to keep the Church from hiding its own people. The Church, as an institution, has proven over the years that it can’t be trusted on that front.
I haven’t read the law, but it would be interesting if it explicitly allowed a “mandatory reporter” to satisfy the requirement by facilitating the transgressor to turn themselves in. That is a clear way out of this problem, keeping the confidentiality intact while keeping the local government’s jurisdiction over crimes as well.
If some random Catholic confessed to a priest that he was diddling kids, you can bet that as part of the penance, the priest would tell that person to turn themselves in to the authorities. But we know what has happened when the confessor was a priest.
This is the thing that’s bugging me. People are taking the Catholic church’s history with priests committing child abuse, then making a blind logical leap that Catholics in general are child abusers (or a significant number of them). It’s twisting the feelings about Catholic priests and targeting them at a wider group. What’s happening here is insidious.
How many Catholics are child molesters, and how many of them are confessing in church, and what penance were they given?
I haven’t read the law, but it would be interesting if it explicitly allowed a “mandatory reporter” to satisfy the requirement by facilitating the transgressor to turn themselves in.
Here’s a link to the law as passed.
It doesn’t seem to explicitly allow what you are suggesting but I supposed the “or cause a report to be made” clause could be interpreted that way.
