What I don’t understand is how the state enforces a law mandating priests ‘rat out’ someone who confessed a certain sin. Sting operations, plea deals for sex abusers, use it in civil cases, how?
Freegards
As an AA sponsor, I've heard a number of 5th steps which are supposedly confidential. I tell them up front that if they stole something or committed other like crimes, I will keep it until I die, but depending on what the crime may have been, I urge them to pray and meditate on it to see if they can find it within themselves to actually atone by doing everything in their power to set it right. If they admit killing someone, abusing a child sexually, etc., they better not tell me because I will take that sort of info to law enforcement.
I have trouble with a priest telling a murderer/pedophile that doing a couple rosaries will make it all OK - they either took it to God or they didn't, and either He forgives them or He doesn't. Getting it off their chest with another person gives them emotional relief they don't deserve.
Even if a priest opts to keep "the sanctity of the confessional" (useful for those who fear having embarrassing moments disclosed, but repugnant as a religious practice for those who "If anyone causes one of these little ones--those who believe in me--to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." and are not vigorously pushed to come clean with the law.