Posted on 07/15/2011 2:46:58 PM PDT by NYer
Biretta tips to Fr. Blake and to Sancte Pater who lead me to this story at The Irish Catholic and elsewhere.
Government proposal to break the seal of confession is without precedent
Thu, 14/07/2011 – 15:34The Taoiseach, the Minister for Justice and the Minister for Children are all indicating that a proposed new law will require priests to break the seal of confession if someone confesses to them the crime of paedophilia.
This would make us the one and only country in the Western world to have such a law. Even Revolutionary France in the days of its worst violence against the Church did not pass a law requiring the breaking of the seal of confession.
The justification for the law is that the crime of paedophilia is so heinous that no one who hears about it, under whatever circumstances, can be allowed to keep it to themselves.
But our Government is clearing missing something that every other Government can see, which is that at a minimum such a law is very unlikely to lead to a single conviction and at a maximum will be counter-productive and will make society less safe, rather than more safe.
It could equally be argued that a priest who hears a confession of murder must report it to the police. But if the murderer knew that priests were under such a legal requirement, the murderer would not make such a confession unless he was going to the police anyway.
On the other hand, a murderer who wishes to confess a crime to a priest, under the absolute seal of the confessional, is on the road to repentance and attending confession gives a priest the chance to encourage the murderer to turn himself over to the authorities or at the very least to cease his criminal activities.
The logic is the same with child abusers. No child abuser will go to a priest in confession knowing the priest is required to inform the police. But cutting off the avenue of confession to a child abuser makes it less likely that he will talk to someone who can persuade him to take the next step.
Various relationships in society are considered privileged and confidential. One is between a person and his or her confessor. Another is between a doctor and patient, and another is between a lawyer and client.
In creating a legal requirement that priests break the seal of confession under certain circumstances, the Irish State is going down a road very few other states in history have gone down. We need to seriously reconsider this extremely unwise and unprecedented proposal.
It says a lot about the present mood here that it can even be entertained.
And that mood is: Attack the Catholic Church, threaten the Catholic Church, intimidate the Catholic Church.
When our Catholic identity is eroded, this is what happens. As the night follows the day, threats of this kind will be made so as to silence the Church, whose duty it is to teach on many moral issues. You know the issues I am talking about. I suspect that this has more to do with hatred of the Church’s teaching office than it does with outrage over child abuse.
Sadly, the climate of anti-Catholicism and oppression is in large part fueled from within the Church herself.
Think about it. A law proposed to force priests to break the Seal… in Ireland.
Thank you for raising an important question! To whom does the pope go to confession? Does the pope even need to go to confession??
The answer is quite simple. The pope is a priest with the heavy responsibility of carrying the church on his shoulders. Yes, he goes to confession! He goes to another priest.
Now, here is an interesting and true story about Pope John Paul II.
A priest from the Archdiocese of New York was visiting Rome. As he was walking into a church to pray, he noticed a beggar sitting at the front door—not an unusual sight in Rome. But something about this particular beggar bothered him. He didn’t figure it out until he began to pray: he suddenly realized that he knew the man from his days in the seminary.A veritable example of love and humility, modeled after Christ.
He immediately went back outside and said to him, "Excuse me, do I know you?" Sure enough, the beggar had been in the seminary with him many years earlier. He had been ordained a priest, but had [in his words] "crashed and burned" in his vocation.
The priest from New York was understandably shaken up when he left the beggar a few minutes later.
That afternoon he was at the Vatican, and had the opportunity to meet the pope and speak with him. He said to him, "Please, Holy Father, pray for this particular man. I went to seminary with him, and he’s now a beggar on the streets of Rome. Please pray for him, because he’s lost."
The Holy Father instructed the priest to go back to the beggar.
He found him—once again—in front of the church, and he said to him, "I have an invitation for the two of us to have dinner with the pope tonight." The beggar said, "No, I can’t." The priest responded, "You’d better, because I’m not going to have dinner with the pope any other way."
So the priest took the beggar to his room, where he provided him with a razor, a much-needed shower, and some clean clothes.
Then they went to dinner. About an hour into the meal, the Holy Father asked the priest from New York to leave the room. He then said to the beggar, "Would you hear my Confession?"
The beggar said, "I’m not a priest anymore." The pope replied, "Once a priest, always a priest."
The beggar said, "But I’m not in good standing with the Church." The pope shot back, "I’m the pope. I’m the bishop of Rome. I can re-instate you now."
The beggar agreed, and Pope John Paul II proceeded to confess his sins.
The beggar-priest barely got the words of absolution out of his mouth before he dropped to his knees and tearfully asked, "Holy Father, will you please hear my Confession?" He confessed, and was restored to good graces with our Lord and the Church.
The Holy Father then invited the New York priest back into the room, and he asked him at what church he had found the beggar. The priest told him. The pope then said to the beggar-priest, "For your first assignment, I want you to go to the pastor there and report for duty, because you’ll be an associate at that parish with a special outreach to the beggars in that area."
And that’s where he is today, serving God and the poor as a priest.
But the relationship of the Church and the State in Ireland after 1921 was unusual, and the homosexual abuse ring in the Church in Ireland apparently had correspondingly unusual power and influence.
It makes sense, therefore, that the fall from (earthly) grace of the Irish Church would be correspondingly severe.
>>I don’t think much of Catholics<<
Well, I think those who don’t think much of Catholics fall under the label of Putz. How bigoted of you. Can you possibly imagine how many long time Catholic FReepers value your opinion of them? Especially when you signed up just over a year ago to drop your nugget of wisdom here.
I will agree that it’s an attack on the Church in Ireland and my guess is that the Irish have very short memories.
That is entrapment and a false claim so the priest has not reported a false claim. He should not be prosecuted for that.
Reality is probably different in the criminal justice system.
Read the rest of my post,I keep my religious preferences non-personal and I speak with an honest mind.As for what people value and don’t value,that is up to their individuals opinions isn’t it?
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