Posted on 06/08/2018 1:51:23 PM PDT by ebb tide
SYDNEY, Australia - Laws requiring Catholic priests to break the seal of confession in some cases passed the Australian Capital Territory’s Legislative Assembly in Canberra June 7.
The purpose of the Ombudsman Amendment Bill 2018 was to expand the Reportable Conduct Scheme governing allegations of child abuse and misconduct to include religious organizations.
The legislation passed without amendment. The Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn has nine months to negotiate with the government on how it will work before the start of reportable conduct requirements.
Writing in The Canberra Times June 7, Archbishop Christopher Prowse of Canberra and Goulburn said he supported the revised scheme, but would not support a requirement to break the seal of confession. He said such a requirement would neither help prevent abuse nor efforts to improve the safety of children in Catholic organizations.
Apart from the fact that child abusers do not confess their crimes to police or priests, such legislation would also threaten Catholics’ religious freedom, he wrote.
“The government threatens religious freedom by appointing itself an expert on religious practices and by attempting to change the sacrament of confession while delivering no improvement in the safety of children,” he said.
In April, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian called for the seal of confession to be addressed by the Council of Australian Governments rather than state governments in isolation.
“Our response to that recommendation (of the Royal Commission) is to take it through the COAG process. We believe that is the best way to deal with it,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“They’re complex issues that need to be balanced with what people believe to be religious freedoms,” the premier said.
Yea? Well it'll make your government snitches impotent, Xi.
snort
The abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was not about pedophilia. It was about homosexual priests, most of those boys were adolescent or close to adolescent in age. You got it sideways guy.
Like I said, maybe if the church hadn’t been complicit in a world wide ring of pedophiles, actively engaged in covering it up for decades, and instead had defrocked the monsters and turned them in I might have a shred of sympathy for the argument their making.
But they didn’t.
So I don’t.
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
There is only one entity to blame for this and that is the church itself.
L
“The church really protected all those kids when they were hiding known pedophiles for decades. That’s really showing respect for the law now, ain’t it.”
And how much of any of that was confessed in a confessional? This isn’t about what happened decades ago. Nor is it about cover-ups. It’s about the state telling a religion what it must do and what it must believe. If a state can tell a religion that confessions must be revealed to the state, then it sure as hell can tell a religious person who they must bake a cake for, or who they must perform a wedding ceremony for.
“If the church wanted the sanctity of the confessional respected THEY could have shown a bit of respect for the law AND the victims.”
So the sanctity of the confessional is conditional? Thank God our Supreme Court is smarter than you apparently are.
“You’d think all these holy types would have read that part of the Bible.”
They did. Acts 5:29.
Would you rather the Church drop the Sacrament of Confession altogether?
Or are you even a Catholic?
“Would you rather the Church drop the Sacrament of Confession altogether?”
I’d rather they hadn’t run the largest ring of pedophiles in recorded history.
L
Seems like this would be a law Catholic priests would have to refuse to obey. I’m not Catholic and see little value in confessing to a priest - but Catholics do! Tell someone that confession to a priest is tantamount to putting a rope around your neck puts the state squarely in conflict with basic, fundamental beliefs about God and salvation.
This isn’t playing around at the edges. This is jumping into the middle of traditional Catholic belief with both boots on!
At least, that is how it looks to me. At some point, the state needs to understand that religious belief isn’t something one changes like a T-shirt!
“That is both exactly the point, and why this passed.”
No, it isn’t. What evidence do you have that all, many or even more than a few abuse cases were confessed in the confessional to a priest? This is about punishing the Church in a way that will not actually lead to the protection of children.
1) If an abuser has a pang of conscience, but knows his confessional is now subject to state records, he will simply not confess.
2) Even if he confesses, since the confession is anonymous, no abuser will EVER actually be turned in if he ever bothers to make a confession. IT’S ANONYMOUS.
3) Since no names are used in confessions most likely there will be no details known about the abused child.
Thus, who EXACTLY is going to be helped by this law?
Priests can’t obey it.
Confessions are anonymous so abusers will not be caught even if the priest reveals to police what he heard.
Names of victims will not be known so no child will be aided by this.
There isn’t even reason to believe abusers are confessing in the first place.
The only logical outcome of this is that Leftist agitators, seeking to destroy the Church, will use the law to entrap priests. That is the only possible outcome if the law actually comes into play.
| 1467 Given the delicacy and greatness of this ministry and the respect due to persons, the Church declares that every priest who hears confessions is bound under very severe penalties to keep absolute secrecy regarding the sins that his penitents have confessed to him. He can make no use of knowledge that confession gives him about penitents' lives. This secret, which admits of no exceptions, is called the "sacramental seal," because what the penitent has made known to the priest remains "sealed" by the sacrament. |
Now you’re just making crap up.
That’s exactly what’s going on. It’s no different - no matter how good the intention - than telling Baptists they must marry gay couples.
Oops.
Won’t happen.
The priest’s do not want to go to Hell.
“I’d rather they hadn’t run the largest ring of pedophiles in recorded history.”
They didn’t. And even if they did, this law has nothing to do with it and wouldn’t solve that problem anyway.
Are you aware that this is more sexual abuse in families, in schools and in non-Catholic Churches than there are in the Catholic Church?
Please look into the facts.
There’s only a few ways to enforce something like this as far as I can tell—and that is some sort of recorded false confession in a sting operation, or a claimed or recorded confession by an actual abuser who is banking that confession recording/claim in order to cut a better prosecution deal if he is under suspicion or has abused in the past. Either way the priest defends himself the same way—”I can’t confirm or deny I ever heard this confession much less what was confessed in it”.
I wonder if this would eventually be applied in civil cases. That would be a good way to bankrupt the Church.
Freegards
Owning up to abuse perpetrated and dealing with the consequences is the correct and proper way to confess sin.
Hiding it by *confessing* in private to someone who doesn’t know you and you don’t know may help some people feel like they have a clear conscience, but goes nowhere in correcting the wrong done.
I do not think that law should mandate it as that is an overreach of secular authority over the church and a slippery slope, but the perpetrator should be encouraged to confront their victim, if possible, and ask forgiveness of the one they wronged, not someone not even connected with the situation.
Oh well, that's better now, isn't it?
The same that claimed there were no pedophiles.
Until a tide of convictions sometimes accompanied by confessions swept that assertion away. So the new refrain is that there weren't that many and any case where there wasn't enough evidence remaining for a conviction decades later simply never happened.
There is a concept of repentance and amends which the Catholic Church eschewed.
During the JP2 papacy, maybe Rome should have established an order specifically to locate child victims wherever they were and make their lives as whole as possible. That path (which they did not take) would have glorified God and restored (in as much as such were possible) the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church.
Sometimes what an organization refuses to do (and make no mistake, a fair number of the victims at the heart of the public trials begged for this to happen rather than quick and done monetary settlements) says as much about them as what they are revealed to have done.
You are demanding a fully unearned restoration of a relationship with the public and the rest of Christendom which the Catholic Church destroyed by its actions, while not even being interested in the steps necessary.
Pretty much a carbon copy of an abusive spouse who demands to simply be forgiven while refusing to make changes. Sometimes the authorities come along and help the abusive spouse make changes. In this case, the authorities are doing exactly the same.
The solution here is simple. You just ignore the government law and take the consequences until they realize their law has no weight.
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