Catholic Church To Excommunicate Priests for Following New US State Law

Let's do the thought experiment where this is about muslims instead of christians...

How does that play out?

Teaching has the most pedophiles, followed by music tutor, and priests/clerics are 3rd.

There's a Christian duty to follow laws that are just as well. From a very Christian perspective, the right thing to do would be convincing them to confess outright at least.

I'm no priest and I was definitely never catholic, but that's how I see it as someone who grew up in a protestant house.

Yeah religion is a great cover for abusing kids.

This is disgusting, doctors need to report the same thing. Its child abuse its basically saying you support pedofilia. Unless that's what you're covering up in your thinly veiled argument. The Catholic church should not be a safe haven for pedophiles.

Exceptions exist, like when practices are outright criminal in themselves

Aiding and abetting criminals is a crime.

?

During the investigation of child sexual abuse, if the perpetrator is a Catholic, they'll ask if the abuser confessed. If so, the priest is liable to be prosecuted.

Honestly, my biggest problem with the law is how unlikely it is to ever be prosecuted. Proving that an abuser confessed would be impossible. They are infringing on the First Amendment and ensuring that no abuser ever talks to their priest, but in practice priests probably won't follow the law and if they don't the state is unlikely to actually enforce the law.

Imprisoned for what? I can't see how any jury could ever convict someone "beyond a reasonable doubt" or what not on someone saying something. Most prosecutors would likely say you'd need more evidence to even start building a case. Now if the person went to the police and reported being sexually assaulted and then the priest came forward it might go somewhere, but even then it may not go anywhere if there wasn't evidence. They have to prove someone performed an illegal act, which someone's word counts for shit. We could get 1,000,000 people to say pdiddy raped Selina Gomez, but without any other evidence, it shouldn't go anywhere with the way our justice system is set up.

Public Defender: "were you there?" Priest: "No"

It's not yours, though. It is the choice of the state/federal prosecutors. And that's where this gets hairy.

Because the modern political order is dripping with pedophiles and rapists and accomplices to the same. They go about openly admitting to their crimes, while silencing their critics and avoiding any kind of punishment. Meanwhile, they unleash the fully-unchecked power of the police, in defiance of court order and legislative statute, to arrest and remove suspects without trial or even serious investigation.

A legal system operating in this capacity - one in which a donation to Trump's bitcoin fund matters more than the contents of a case file or a jury's verdict - cannot deliver anything resembling justice.

Imagine if any other type of organization had this sort of systemic problem with child abuse.

“Wow, there sure are a lot of pedophile employees at Apple Computer abusing their customers’ children.”

“Dang, the US Department of Transportation sure does have a kiddie diddler problem.”

“Holy shit, what’s the deal with all the abusive perverts working at Ronald McDonald House?”

Sounds absolutely bonkers, right‽

If any secular organization was having this kind of problem at scale, we’d all be calling for their blood. Yet the church gets a pass somehow. A few complaints, a few lawsuits, some big scandals, some negative press, but fundamentally nothing ever changes.

To hell with the church.

The entire religion is based on shame and fear. The clergy take advantage of both.

It's a constant problem because its a cult that wants to protect its cult members. It finds no issue with indoctrinating kids, to the point where nobody batted an eye when they recently (like, in the past 10 years) decreased the age at which children go through the sacrament of Confirmation. The same sacrament that is meant to affirm your adulthood in the church, where you say, "I may have been told to practice this by my parents before, but now I'm an adult now and choose to practice it of my own volition."

They do this when children are thirteen years old. Thirteen.

When I was fifteen I did not have the capacity to make this decision for myself. Now I have to live with the fact I'm on a list somewhere as an adult in the church. The Catholic Church is an evil institution that uses trauma for the purpose of coercion.

To be fair, lawyers get to avoid this (I assume). This isn't the same obviously, but if you view it from their frame of reference it is even more important. They must confess if they want to be "saved from God", and similarly you should be honest with your lawyer to be saved from the court.

I don't know where I stand on this issue. I obviously want them to be caught, and the religion is bogus, and the organization causes tremendous harm. However, if someone believes it's true then this is pretty significant overreach and directly interferes with religious practice. They start with the crime most people will agree with, and then it sets a precident to go after other crimes in the same fashion. I'm too skeptical of the state to trust it'll always be a good thing.

Personally, I think it goes back to the Catholic Church's special status as its own sovereign country. They didnt just elect a Pope this week. They elected an absolute monarch. Even though that monarch's territory is only .5 sqkm, it used to be much larger, and the Church literally has outposts everywhere indirectly subject to its rule.

And a key thing to understand is that the Church doesn't use confession to hide crimes from just anyone. If some random Catholic confessed to a priest that he was diddling kids, you can bet that as part of the penance, the priest would tell that person to turn themselves in to the authorities. But we know what has happened when the confessor was a priest.

The Church was always super arrogant when it came to transgressions by its own people. To them, subjecting a priest to civil law makes just as much sense as subjecting an Italian to Australian law. When a priest confessed he was diddling kids, they would handle it in their own manner, without getting the local authorities involved.

That's the real reason why this law is written the way it is. It's to keep the Church from hiding its own people. The Church, as an institution, has proven over the years that it can't be trusted on that front.

I haven't read the law, but it would be interesting if it explicitly allowed a "mandatory reporter" to satisfy the requirement by facilitating the transgressor to turn themselves in. That is a clear way out of this problem, keeping the confidentiality intact while keeping the local government's jurisdiction over crimes as well.

Congratulations. You fell for propaganda by stupid framing.

This is not actually about child abuse per se. It's also not about "warning" priests.

This is a simple and factual reminder: Confessions are part of a protected sacrament and the seal of confession is absolute and always has been (or at least for nearly a millenium). To violate it means excommunication.

I wonder if you would react with the same outrage when this was a bar association reminding their lawyers of the disciplinary consequences of violating confidentiality agreements.

Catholic Church = Child Molester Haven.

Pretty simple.

It would be fine as long as it didn't apply to confession where the seal of confession applies to all information. Any other time the priest can and should use any information available to him properly, and that could include that sort of reporting. But the seal is absolute. And honestly it's protected by law, by the constitution and case law, so the Washington law is a hassle but completely toothless as it'll be struck down the moment any challenges to it get brought to the right courts. The authors had to have known it was unconstitutional, so it was basically just them doing this for show, and to antagonize Catholics.

This is completely accurate, and yet so many responses are pretending it's not.

A mandated reporter is a person who is required by law to report crimes, typically if they know or suspect a child or vulnerable adult has been or is at risk of being abused or neglected

Mandated reporters have to report child abuse. Full goddamn stop. No, it doesn't matter if it's in the past, why the fuck would that change anything?

These people really think that it's okay not to report pedophilia? Why? Because the pedophile confessed to inarguably one of the worst crimes imaginable, and promised not to do it anymore?

You think a therapist wouldn't report that because their patient said they won't do it anymore? Did they pinky swear?

That's not quite accurate. Therapists are required to break confidentiality if they believe there is an ongoing risk to others, not because someone tells them of child abuse they committed in the past. In that sense, a confessional would probably be the same - you don't confess to things that haven't happened yet. You're more likely to express ongoing risk in therapy than in confession.

If the confessor indicated that they were going to continue doing things, that's when a confession should become reportable, if we're want the law to be secular and equitable.

This is not true. A therapist would be required to break confidentially if they became aware that their Client is going to harm themselves or others, or if they are mandated by law.

What someone already did in the past generally isn't reported.

First off, adapting religion to secular laws is not how that works. There's the separation of church an state and the state should have no say in any religion. The country was based on religious freedom and escaping what the English kings were trying to do to Christianity in their realms (controlling religion).

But second you shouldn't take that way since you don't seem to grasp the role reconciliation has for Catholics and Orthodox (and others). It's a sacrament (or sacred mystery for Orthodox). That's dogma and the practice/form is in large part a matter of unchangeable doctrine. That kind of doctrine never gets changed, ever, and never has. It's an essential part of Catholics' beliefs. Parts of format are just regular teaching which can get changed, but that's not a matter of interpretation, it's a matter of practice (in this case canon law) guided by the foundatinal dogma and unchanging doctrine. The seal of confessing is so fundamental, so sacred that there have been numerous martyrs whose status comes from having been willing to die rather than break it. It's would be less grave to lie about believing in Christ to save your life than to break the seal (and most martyrs died for refusing to reject their faith when Christianity was prohibited).

Note for the internet: I am just clarifying the Catholic stance. I am not Catholic and not defending them.

Priests cannot reveal what someone tells them in confession. It's a lot like attorney-client privilege, as your priest is supposed to be your advocate before God. Breaking the seal of confession is a big deal (to them) because, just like criminals deserve representation, sinners need to be able to confess.

They hold confession to be inviolate, which is fucking bullshit. Doctors, including psychiatrists, who aren't allowed to share that shit do have to report certain criminal acts to police.

Unfortunately all too often freedom of religion translates to freedom from consequences. Fuck the Catholic church (and all churches) in general, but in particular for shit like this. Three Catholic church isn't unique in this, it's just got the most rigidly hierarchical, top-down structure of them all.

Now?

It's always been this way. There are a few states that require a priest to report child aduse but most don't require it.

It's always been this way.

If you're gonna bash the guy, at least use a credible source for christ's sake.

Edit: 👍

the Will County Gazette is an imposter site, lacks transparency, and publishes false information. As a result, we rate them right-center, biased, and Questionable.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/will-county-gazette-bias/

This article is from 2 days ago before he was elected the pope.

Being a piece of shit is a prerequisite to be a religious leader, full stop.

That ship sailed when they elected a Catholic. What else could have happened?