The Seal of Confession and "weasel words".

Few things get up my nose and arouse my ire like injustice and people, or organisations, using “weasel words” to try and escape scrutiny and to try and maintain their authority! It is almost as if their only “crime” was to be caught! Doesn’t seem to matter what they did.

In relation to the recommendations of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuses, the Catholic Church used their response to argue, 

“.. that children would be less safe if mandatory reporting of confessions was required.

A perpetrator or victim might be less likely to raise abuse in confession if confidence in the sacramental seal was undermined,” the response said.

So an opportunity would be lost to encourage a perpetrator to self-report to civil authorities or victims to seek safety," it said.

And then Archbishop Coleridge went on to compare the “sacramental seal of confession” to client-lawyer privilege and journalistic protection of sources. 

Less safe! And “protection” similar to client-lawyer privilege! To protect a paedophile Catholic in a House of God! And then to claim that an abused child would be less safe! Words fail me – I’m staggered that anyone, anyone, would make such a claim. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Weasel words indeed! It seems at all costs protect the “Sacred” institution of the Catholic Church!!!

In relation to the Church’s response, mentioned above, I repeat here something I wrote sometime ago – that I think it is worth repeating.

The Confessional:

As I understand it, this requirement was originally imposed in the Middle Ages, at least in part, by church leaders who expected priests to interrogate penitents and learn if they might be heretics. 

Confession and the authority to grant absolution also greatly enhanced the power of the priest. With sins absolved, the believer would gain heaven. Without absolution, death could bring the spiritual pain of purgatory or the eternal damnation of hell.

It would appear that from the very beginnings of the confessional, practices varied widely among both priests and laypeople. Some clergy emphasized compassion and forgiveness and faithfully kept secret what they heard. Others exploited their power and the information captured during the sacrament. The 11th-century monk Peter Damian (1007 – 1072) famously excoriated clerics for the sexual abuse of minors, which often began with the penitent-confessor relationship. In the later Middle Ages, apparently criminality among confessors was widespread and entrenched. Much of the criminality involved sexual assaults and priestly transgressions against the church's sexual mores (later adopted as a rule or canon).

So, what’s new? There is nothing “sacred” about the “seal” of confession – quite the reverse. At best a priest should be acting only as a counselor for a troubled parishioner, someone to talk openly with – not hide behind a screen. To me – hiding behind a screen while confessing, to God presumably, is hypocritical in the extreme. I mean where is God in all this? Is God only “up there?”; or only in a “house of God”; or, as I strongly suspect “everywhere”! If God is everywhere there is no place to hide – least of all behind a screen! 

Furthermore does a “sinner” require absolution from a priest – also possibly a “sinner” himself - to “return to God”? Please!! 

The Catholic Church has no claim to any “moral authority” while it hides behind its so-called inviolable “laws of the Church”. They are nothing of the sort.

It’s high time they realised that this is the 21 Century – after the birth of the man they profess to worship – the man of peace, the man of love!