Posted on 11/15/2014 1:56:37 PM PST by NYer
VATICAN CITY — The secrecy of a confession is maintained so seriously and completely by the Catholic Church that a priest would be excommunicated for revealing the contents of a confession when ordered to testify by a court or even after the penitent dies, Vatican officials said.
“No confessor can be dispensed from it, even if he would want to reveal the contents of a confession in order to prevent a serious and imminent evil,” said Msgr. Krzysztof Nykiel, regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary, a Vatican court dealing with matters of conscience.
The penitentiary sponsored a conference at the Vatican Nov. 12-13 on “the confessional seal and pastoral privacy.”
According to the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, conference participants heard that since the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 spelled out the penalties in church law for violating the secret of the confessional, “the discipline of the church in this matter has remained substantially the same,” with the exception of additional protections.
One of those additions, the newspaper said, was a 1988 church law explicitly stating that using an “electronic apparatus” to record, broadcast or otherwise share the contents of a confession also is an excommunicable offense.
Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, told conference participants it is important “to remove any suspicion” that the church’s commitment to the confessional seal “is designed to cover intrigues, plots or mysteries as people sometimes naively believe or, more easily, are led to believe.”
The seal, he said, is intended to protect the most intimate part of the human person, “that is, to safeguard the presence of God within each man.” The effect of the secret, he said, is that it also protects a person’s reputation and right to privacy.
The confessional seal, Msgr. Nykiel said, “is binding not only on the confessor, but also on the interpreter, if present, and anyone who in any way, even casually, comes to know of the sins confessed.”
The church, he said, takes the seal so seriously that it forbids, on the pain of excommunication, a priest from testifying in court about what he heard in the confessional, “even if the penitent requests” he testify.
Not even the death of the penitent can absolve the confessor from the obligation to maintain the secret, Msgr. Nykiel said.
Which is a total denial of the power of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit to enable someone to resist the temptation that they face.
God promises us in His word....
1 Corinthians 10:1-13 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
Every time I hear that excuse about Catholic priests it makes me want to vomit.
Honestly.
NO! Molesting children is not *commit the same sins as everyone else*!
Unless everyone you know molests children. I certainly don't and I'd wager that most of the people I know haven't done that either.
Or are you telling us that all Catholics you know molest children as well?
I do say that with a straight face because it is true, Catholics live up to a higher standard than do most others.
Well, there's a bunch of hogwash if I ever heard it. In the previous sentence, you just told us that priests *priests are human and commit the same sins as everyone else....*. If molesting children is the same sins as *everyone else*, then just where is the *higher standard* which Catholics live up to?
Higher than WHAT???? pray tell????
A serial killer?
Certainly nothing has changed in Catholicism. The homosexual lifestyle and abuse has been going on for centuries and was not addressed until the victims refused to be cowed by the church any more and went public with it and the RCC was forced into damage control mode.
We have the seven sacraments instituted by Christ, the consecration of the nread [sic]and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.....
Big deal. It certainly doesn't appear to have done ANY Catholic any good, neither the parishioner who commits the *same sins* as the priest, or the priest who is molesting children.
The life of Christ within a person makes a dramatic change in the persons life.
It will. It must.
A person cannot be a new creation in Christ, have the mind of Christ, have the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit to convict of sin and give strength to resist temptation, and not be different.
Anyone who *commits the same sins as everyone else....* (eg living a lifestyle of immorality and sexually molesting children) is NOT saved.
By their fruits ye shall know them. What I find astonishing is that these are the same priests that Catholics go to with their innermost confessions. They put their full faith and trust in those apostates.
Wasn't it Solomon that said something about "...nothing new under the sun..."
Pope Stephen VI (896–897), who had his predecessor Pope Formosus exhumed, tried, de-fingered, briefly reburied, and thrown in the Tiber.[1]
Pope John XII (955–964), who gave land to a mistress, murdered several people, and was killed by a man who caught him in bed with his wife.
Pope Benedict IX (1032–1044, 1045, 1047–1048), who "sold" the Papacy
Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303), who is lampooned in Dante's Divine Comedy
Pope Urban VI (1378–1389), who complained that he did not hear enough screaming when Cardinals who had conspired against him were tortured.[2]
Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503), a Borgia, who was guilty of nepotism and whose unattended corpse swelled until it could barely fit in a coffin.[3]
Pope Leo X (1513–1521), a spendthrift member of the Medici family who once spent 1/7 of his predecessors' reserves on a single ceremony[4]
Pope Clement VII (1523–1534), also a Medici, whose power-politicking with France, Spain, and Germany got Rome sacked.
Almost like a WIFE can't be forced to testify against her spouse.
catch 22
Wearing preconception glasses blinds you to the Catholic teachings NOT Scripture.
AHhhh...
I now see where the Mormons get their Convenant taking in the Temple so seriously from...
Has the church RETAINED any sins lately?
Oh?
The Book seems to indicate that they are SLEEPING; awaiting the Last Trump.
70 * 7 = 490
8-)
Deuteronomy 23:21
If you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not be slow to fulfill it, for the Lord your God will certainly demand it of you and you will be guilty of sin.
Not so very long ago, an old German man was feeling guilty about something he had done, so he decided to go to Confession.
He said, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I feel terrible because during World War II I hid a refugee in my attic.”
The priest said, “But that’s not a sin! I wouldn’t feel bad about that if I were you!”
“But I made him agree to pay me 50 Marks for every week he stayed.”
The priest said, “Well, I admit that certainly wasn’t the most noble thing to do, charging the man to save his life — but you did save his life, after all, and that is a good thing. Don’t worry about it too much; God forgives.”
The man said, “Oh thank you, Father, that eases my mind. I have only one more question to ask you — Do I have to tell him the war is over?”
Wouldn’t know. It would happen in the Confessional if a priest refused to give absolution -— and then, he wouldn’t be allowed to tell because of his vow.
Meh.
29 Then the Spirit of the Lord came on Jephthah. He crossed Gilead and Manasseh, passed through Mizpah of Gilead, and from there he advanced against the Ammonites. 30 And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, 31 whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”
32 Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the Lord gave them into his hands. 33 He devastated twenty towns from Aroer to the vicinity of Minnith, as far as Abel Keramim. Thus Israel subdued Ammon.
34 When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of timbrels! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. 35 When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, “Oh no, my daughter! You have brought me down and I am devastated. I have made a vow to the Lord that I cannot break.”
36 “My father,” she replied, “you have given your word to the Lord. Do to me just as you promised, now that the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites. 37 But grant me this one request,” she said. “Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends, because I will never marry.”
38 “You may go,” he said. And he let her go for two months. She and her friends went into the hills and wept because she would never marry. 39 After the two months, she returned to her father, and he did to her as he had vowed. And she was a virgin.
From this comes the Israelite tradition 40 that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.
'It is said' covers a LOT of stuff found in Catholicism.
Hey!
They can forgive sins!
Not even Mary can do THAT!
Since when has THAT ever stopped Catholic non-biblical ritual?
Ya tell some things to a celibate and...
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