LOS ANGELES (CA)
Catholic News Service
May 17, 2019
By Pablo Kay
A bill making its way through the California Legislature would make the state the first since 1999 to require priests to choose between violating the law or violating the seal of the confessional.
At issue is the serious matter of child sexual abuse. Seven states right now require priests to violate the seal to report child abuse based on legislation passed in the 1970s and through the 1990s.
While many states have tried since 2002 to pass laws resembling the California Senate measure, S.B. 360, none have been successful. Instead, lawmakers around the country concluded similar bills would not protect children and would be a violation of religious liberty.
The summer of 2018 — with its Pennsylvania grand jury report on alleged abuse by priests and other church workers (with many claims decades old), the revelations of sexual misdeeds by then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington and investigations by state attorneys general into clergy abuse records — brought the battle against sexual abuse back to the confessional.
In California, priests, along with teachers, social workers, doctors and other professionals, are “mandated reporters.” That means they are required by law to report any case of suspected abuse to authorities. Currently, there is an exemption in the law for any clergy member “who acquires knowledge or a reasonable suspicion of child abuse or neglect during a penitential communication.”
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