Confessional Debate Is a Royal Commission Red Herring

By Chris McGillion
Eureka Street
November 29, 2012

http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=34237


The clamour is growing to enable the forthcoming Royal Commission into child sex abuse to require Catholic priests to break the seal of confession if doing so is deemed necessary to investigate abusers and/or the issue of institutional cover ups. The Federal Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, has expressed support for such a power, saying that child abuse is 'a crime' that 'should be reported' under any circumstances.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard also supports the move. 'Adults have got a duty of care towards children,' she has said, 'and it's not good enough for people to engage in sins of omission and not act when a child is at risk.'

The former auxiliary bishop of Sydney, Geoffrey Robinson, a vocal critic of the way the Church has handled clerical sex abuse cases, said he'd break the seal for the 'greater good' and report a confessor to the police if he believed there was an ongoing risk of further offences. At least one Melbourne priest has said he'd do the same.

Before this debate goes much further, it would be wise for everyone to consider what is at stake. Roxon has said that the more important issue is the failure to report to police known cases of abuse and 'open secrets' that came to the attention of priests and Church authorities by means other than the confessional. Similarly, Bishop Robinson has conceded the obvious: 'Offenders in this field, in paedophilia, do not go to confession and confess.'

How much, then, of a practical nature is likely to be gained by trying to force open the seal of confession? More importantly, how much of a religious nature is likely to be damaged? Child abuse is a crime, but so is murder, so is theft. If the seal should not apply to the first, why should it logically apply to the rest?

Sins of omission can be committed, but sins are something other than criminal acts, although they may entail them. Sin is a religious concept — something a believer commits when they deliberately act against the will of God — and as such something that the religious instrument of the confessional is specifically meant to address.

Rushing head-strong into these religious dimensions risks broadening the Royal Commission into a full-blown challenge to the status of the Church (and religious faith) in secular society.

As the practice of private confessions emerged in the fifth century, the seal of confession developed as a way of encouraging people to confess their sins by promising strict confidentiality.

That promise has now been so well established that the Church's Code of Canon Law makes clear that the 'sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason' and that a priest 'is prohibited completely from using knowledge acquired from confession to the detriment of the penitent even when any danger of revelation is excluded'.

When Cardinal George Pell referred several times to the 'inviolable' nature of the seal, he was not being obstructionist — as many have suggested — but merely repeating the Church's well established position on the issue which he, being a bishop, is required to do.

The Catechism of the Church elaborates on the prohibition to reveal information obtained in the confessional.

Given the delicacy and greatness of this ministry [of hearing confessions and dispensing absolution] and the respect due to persons, the Church declares that every priest who hears confession 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.

Elsewhere, the Catechism repeats that 'it is a crime for a confessor in any way to betray a penitent by word or in any other manner or for any reason'.

What is generally known as confession, the Church knows as the sacrament of Penance (or Reconciliation). It is one of seven sacraments — the others being Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Marriage, Holy Order and the Anointing of the Sick. The Church regards a sacrament as the visible sign of God's invisible presence, a sign through which it communicates the saving grace of God.

Sacraments are also held to be signs of the unity of the Church. They represent, in other words, a fundamental component of what it means to be Catholic and to practice a life of faith. It is thus inconceivable that Catholic authorities, from the Pope down, would countenance the state interfering in the sacramental life of the Church. And any attempt to do so would quickly turn into an issue of freedom of religion.

If the Royal Commission were to go down that path it could quickly find it had bitten off much more than it can chew. And the true focus of the inquiry — on child abuse — would be only one of the casualties likely to result.