Catholic church to excommunicate priests for following new US state law
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
The article also doesn't seem to accurately represent what confessions would be covered. The reporting requirement is not just for child abuse, but instead appears to be more broadly for abuse, maltreatment or neglect. Depending on how the law views neglect, that could be quite broad, eg, if one thinks about the occasional claims in parts of the US of things like allowing children to walk places on their own being neglect.
[1]: https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2025-26/Pdf/Bills/Se...
>(a) When any member of the clergy, practitioner, county coroner or medical examiner, law enforcement officer, professional school personnel, registered or licensed nurse, social service counselor, psychologist, pharmacist, employee of the department of children, youth, and families, licensed or certified child care providers or their employees, employee of the department of social and health services, juvenile probation officer, diversion unit staff, placement and liaison specialist, responsible living skills program staff, HOPE center staff, state family and children's ombuds or any volunteer in the ombuds' office, or host home program has reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect, he or she shall report such incident, or cause a report to be made, to the proper law enforcement agency or to the department as provided ...
>(b) When any person, in his or her official supervisory capacity with a nonprofit or for-profit organization, has reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect caused by a person over whom he or she regularly exercises supervisory authority, he or she shall report such incident, or cause a report to be made, to the proper law enforcement agency, provided that the person alleged to have caused the abuse or neglect is employed by, contracted by, or volunteers with the organization and coaches, trains, educates, or counsels a child or children or regularly has unsupervised access to a child or children as part of the employment, contract, or voluntary service. ....
> Except for members of the clergy, no one shall be required to report under this section when he or she obtains the information solely as a result of a privileged communication as provided in RCW 5.60.060.14.
Here, the change in this bill specifically was to add the “except for members of the clergy“.
The tendency on this site to immediately leap toward assuming someone is simply wrong, without first considering that they may be saying something different, is rather dismaying.
While I agree with you, it’s also in keeping with typical Silicon Valley behavior. Edit: which isn’t a defense of that tendency by any means.
Catholic priest on the other hand may take confession every day from child abuser who works with children and says nothing.
Murder? Sure.
How about other violent crimes?
Damaging property at a protest? The police will think they need this information. Catholic doctrine is even minor sins should be confessed.
Priests will eventually need to govern a Miranda warning to penitents entering the confessional. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you confess can and will be reported to law enforcement. You have the right to have an attorney and a canon lawyer present in this confessional. If you can’t afford a canon lawyer, please join the years-long waitlist for one. Knowing these rights, do you still wish to confess to me?”
No religious authority or relationship should receive special treatment under civil law.
This is not an “it’s for the children” argument, but rather about complete separation of church and state. Religious law should never overrule civil law in any circumstance, in the US.
Past crimes, generally no responsibility. Danger or repeating a crime, obviously. What is there to discuss?
The general idea is that confessors shouldn’t be civil agents (particularly in the confessional) conducting investigations on each person who comes in.
And no, priests aren’t treated like any other person. You or I (assuming neither of us are in some profession like teacher, police officer etc) don’t have to go “report” to the police if we think someone is in danger of repeating a crime.
That organization seems evil to me.
Mostly, not particularly. “Canon lawyer” and “priest” are... not the same thing, and most priests’ jobs aren't particularly canon law centered.
Piercing confessional secrecy is going too far. But the case that all religious or other organizations that regularly supervise children need to be willing to report and deal with abuse by their staff is very strong.
I completely agree, and would never argue against that. It appears that this is precisely their angle - to back them into a lose-lose corner. It is a 100% guarantee that the Church is not going to remove the 2,000 year requirements of a sacramental seal to appease a state law. So this will be booked as more "evidence" of the Church failing to protect children.
Its certainly a religious morals argument but I think its also a strong argument that being able to admit something to priest can be a first step toward pushing people to turn themselves in. Granted I don't know the statistics on how often that this happens this way I think if there was no ability to talk about it people would just not talk about it and couldn't be convinced or pushed morally by another human being to tell the authorities.
So saying a Priest must report ongoing child sex abuse is actually remarkably easy to reconcile.
(18) "Member of the clergy" means any regularly licensed, accredited, or ordained minister, priest, rabbi, imam, elder, or similarly situated religious or spiritual leader of any church, religious denomination, religious body, spiritual community, or sect, or person performing official duties that are recognized as the duties of a member of the clergy under the discipline, tenets, doctrine, or custom of the person's church, religious denomination, religious body, spiritual community, or sect, whether acting in an individual capacity or as an employee, agent, or official of any public or private organization or institution.
https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2025-26/Pdf/Bills/Se...
>(b) When any person, in his or her official supervisory capacity with a nonprofit or for-profit organization, has reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect caused by a person over whom he or she regularly exercises supervisory authority, he or she shall report such incident, or cause a report to be made, to the proper law enforcement agency, provided that the person alleged to have caused the abuse or neglect is employed by, contracted by, or volunteers with the organization and coaches, trains, educates, or counsels a child or children or regularly has unsupervised access to a child or children as part of the employment, contract, or voluntary service.
From the Catholic Church's point of view, there should be no worship except to God. Not parents, not saints, not statues: God only. Likewise, it is certainly a mortal sin for a parent to fail in their responsibility towards education of their children- the Catechism of the Catholic Church (the official text that comprehensively explains doctrine, beliefs, and teachings) specifically points that the first steps toward bearing witness to that responsibility is by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule.
I hope that when they meet their creator he will show them the way to hell. If he rewards them for their practices, well, they will be in good company.
Heads up to this US state. I am ashamed that my country, allegedly supporting freedom and equality (France) never had the balls to do that.
It has nothing to do with tech.
Which means that at least for now it's still worth seeing.
If you try to deputize priests for literally God's sake you destroy the point of the sacrament. Which would be fine in the abstract if there wasn't a long-standing precedent for respecting it. Washington trying to break E2EE with God lol.
Another example is attorney - client privilege.
Attorneys and priests are expected to do important duties for the good of society and thus have certain privileges.
It would be unconstitutional to require all citizens to “report” crimes they hear other people confess to them, for rather obvious reasons, although I’m sure some state government will try that next.
In any case, we should be wary of, as a society, condoning any kind of witch hunt. In this case for example, on first read it seems that the overreach is somehow for the specific case of "child abuse", meaning that anything else, including murder, should be okay to confess, no?
Perhaps a mother goes to the confessional. “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. I am deep in debt and couldn’t afford food this week for my kids. So I stole $50 from the cash drawer at my job.”
Now the priest is aware of a possible child neglect situation. What next? Should he consult a lawyer to find out if he needs to report this or not?
Does he report the entire confession? Or just the child neglect part?
There's also the matter of the slippery slope. E.g. what happens when a government decides that raising LGBTQ kids or attending Pride constitute child sex abuse?
I thought there were similar protections for a couple non-religious professions, and for spouses.
I mean that the government is over riding the sacredness of Catholic confession, thus "nothing is sacred anymore".
I am on the side of the Catholic Church on this just to be clear.
I have to wonder why people are DVting my explanation. Odd.
I never knew I would see the day the West would pass the same authoritarian laws used behind the iron curtain to spy on their own population. To be fair to the West, at least it's packaged neatly in a 'for the children' package; the communist totalitarian regimes didn't bother with explanations or 'reasons'.
In case it's not clear: priests were compelled to spy and report on the population by the secret police.
I see arguments on both sides of this but it's not compelling priests to spy. It's removing religious freedom protections from a long-standing precedent.
I also know that the Church is supposed to encourage the reporter to self report to civil authorities and seek help.
The church also lack the ability to prevent abusers from harming vulnerable people.
At the same time I understand their position on clergy-parishioner privilege.
"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." [CCC 1467]
Or if they confess "Yeah I put a bomb under this church and it's going to go off in five minutes, but wait don't go I have more to confess" the priest is supposed to just sit there and let them finish and not make any efforts to leave or even cause others to evacuate?
Or if someone says "I was part of a plan to assassinate the pope, there's a guy scaling the Sistine Chapel with a sniper rifle right now but I feel pretty bad about it" to a priest in the Vatican who just needs to holler to prevent the pope being assassinated, he's supposed to just sit there and wait for God to make his choices?
I guess at the end of the day the priest can always go to confession for violating confession. Nice little relief valve for if their secular conscience happens to overpower their religious conscience. Ingenious, really.
The last time it happened for breaking the seal, afaik, was in 2018 when Ezinwanne Igbo was excommunicated.
[0] https://aleteia.org/2018/02/10/australian-priest-excommunica...
A priest can certainly tell someone at the confessional how to seek absolution and that could include turning themselves in.
It should be kind of obvious that id the state wins here, abusers simply won’t confess in confessionals anymore. Not exactly a big win for the state.
Certainly people who don't share the Catholic Church's religious beliefs may not agree, but it does seem logical that eternal suffering in hell would outweigh temporary suffering during life; even something as horrible as child sexual abuse.
I imagine that priests in that situation would pay a heavy psychological toll for maintaining confidentiality. However, they believe that in the long run it is the best, most moral course of action.
If a father confesses he is sexually abusing their child, the priest has an obligation to report it. Let the father burn in Hell (he's a child abuser anyway, that's what it's for isn't it?) or the priest decide to be an accomplice to the crime.
The point of the confession is the privacy itself and it might be the case that through this method more abusers confess and the whole thing is a net good for the world.
Outside of the confessional, church officials acting as teachers, counselors, administrators, care givers are already obliged to report potential abuse.
Furthermore, this article from Georgetown defines this exception to the attorney client privilege more narrowly.
https://www.law.georgetown.edu/american-criminal-law-review/...
To invoke the crime-fraud exception, the party seeking disclosure of an adver- sary’s attorney-client communications “must make a prima facie showing (1) the client was committing or intending to commit a fraud or crime, and (2) the attor- ney-client communications were in furtherance of that alleged crime or fraud.”
https://www.usccb.org/committees/religious-liberty/religious...
I don’t imagine it will be a big effect, but it will catch some.
No, it's not hard to imagine those kinds of laws, but that doesn't mean this law has to be bad as well. You have to look at the content of a law, not just its shape, to judge it. The only difference between a law making it illegal to punch someone in the nose and a law making it illegal to make the sign of the cross is the details of the arm movements.
To be clear, things said under the "seal of the confessional" cannot be shared by the priest with anyone else _even within the Catholic Church._ This particular situation is not a matter of the church trying to handle matters internally, but more of a recognition that the penitent is confessing their sins to God and the priest is only acting "in persona Cristi" (and thereby is prevented from pursuing other personal or societal objectives based on information revealed).
Another way to view this is that the confessional is basically anonymous. Governments hate anonymity.
Confessors are generally advised to assign satisfaction [penance] that consist of prayers or other strictly spiritual works, so that they are easily completed and remain entirely in the internal forum.
A priest who tried to withhold absolution from a penitent, on the condition of the penitent turning themselves in or confessing to secular authority, that priest would be sanctioned, up to the penalties for breaking the seal of confessional.