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Yet another reason to think it must be time to move out of Washington state.
Even the US Military absolutely honors confessions.
You would think. But then we had a free speech only a few years ago too and that went away. This country is morphing and places like Washington state are showing the way.
Anyone that can apply an ounce of reason to the situation would know that if you could actually force a priest to break the seal, then someone guilty of a crime would never confess it. The only reason they would go to confession is that their conscience is bothering them and they know that the priest can't tell anyone. So in current state you have a situation where someone who might be having a tweak of conscience would receive some counsel that they need to admit their crime and turn themselves in. Remove the seal and they simply won't go.
He is a mere bishop and will stay that way while pope Francis and friends are in power. Perhaps after that he will rise. For now he is even 'officially discouraged' from travel by the Vatican.
There are a number of places around the world where secular law doesn't consider the seal of confession absolute (particularly in cases of child abuse) and Victoria is one of them.
What do you mean by 'managed relatively neatly'? I guess I don't see it as neat at all if disclosed in confession, by victim or perpetrator.
The kind of priests we should be ordaining are those willing to go to prison (or even to die) to protect the inviolability of confession. The rest aren't the kind I would trust to be more than government agents.
Yeah I didn't mean to imply that I thought a law change would change priests doing the right thing.
Exactly. If they want priests to be government snitches what they will get is serious offenders even less likely to confess their sins and a net gain of zero information about serious offenders.
If confessed by the perpetrator, you make turning themselves in to the authorities part of the penance. (That's what I understand, from discussion with local Catholic clergy in Victoria, is the approach they've been told will be taken. I also understand that not just every priest is authorised to hear such a confession, but that there are specialists in dealing with abusers to whom such a person must be referred).
