Seal of Confession

dvpower

who the fug wrote: »

And if the priest says no comment all through the interview and it goes to court would you convict him on the word of a pedo.

I would expect a priest to plead guilty of an offence he was guilty of.
Would you expect a priest to lie on oath (on a bible) to avoid a conviction?

toby08

may be I am just an idiot but a crime is a crime and child sex abuse particularly horrendous.if the catholic church is in any way serious about it then change canon law.If it is law in a country for example reporting crimes against children and a priest has knowledge through the confessional or otherwise he deserves a prison sentence for not reporting it.
In my personal view to save one child from abuse is worth getting thrown out of an uncaring church.

Kate10

There are many circumstances in which a court may be convinced that a priest has failed to report information provided to him in confession. There may be others where it is impossible to prove. Is that what the catholic church intends to rely on?

toby08

lmaopml wrote: »

I think the 'Confession' box here is an easy target. It undermines Catholics for the sake of vigilantism, and it jumps the gun insofar as any other profession is concerned. Should a lawyer not represent a client either whom they believe is 'guilty' of drink driving or speeding? Should they go straight to the judge and say - 'Yeah, he/she told me they did it, so throw the book at them'?

Everybody deserves to be innocent until proven guilty - there is such a thing called 'due process' - it's very very important in civilised society. It involves an 'accusation' and a procedure.......

Now, rather than indulging in hysterics over the 'confessional' - perhaps the law, and in particular those who are suggesting such outrageous human rights violations should start to look at how better to 'protect' children and improve the 'law' which was ultimately complicit in letting them down? No?

the hysterics as you refer to them are in fact part of the core issue used in cover up after cover up. pedophiles by their very nature are 97% re offenders regardless of treatment. So forgive me I cannot see how keeping secrets about these offenders helps anyone.how can anyone say that they are christian and believe in God and at the same time approve of protecting pedophiles. drivers slow at speed traps, cctv help lower crime by the same token if these offenders knew their deeds would not be hidden it might help prevent some of their crimes. until this secrecy ends any priest just like other groups and agencies can not be trusted.

mikedone

28064212 wrote: »

No it doesn't, anymore than a law against speeding is impossible to enforce because a motoring club has a rule that you must speed all the time

The difference being that speeding is an easy offense to prove whereas the only real way to prove what happens in the privacy of the confessional is to place a bug in it or get the priest to break the seal

dvpower

mikedone wrote: »

The difference being that speeding is an easy offense to prove whereas the only real way to prove what happens in the privacy of the confessional is to place a bug in it or get the priest to break the seal

Why would you need to prove anything. Wouldn't a priest just admit the offence and take the punishment? They don't need to break the seal to plead guilty to a crime they know they are guilty of.

28064212

mikedone wrote: »

The difference being that speeding is an easy offense to prove whereas the only real way to prove what happens in the privacy of the confessional is to place a bug in it or get the priest to break the seal

Lots of times it's impossible to prove a speeding charge. Lot of times it is possible to prove (beyond reasonable doubt) that someone had knowledge of child abuse

Do you think a law making it mandatory to pass on details of suspected child sexual abuse to authorities is a good idea?

mikedone

dvpower wrote: »

Why would you need to prove anything. Wouldn't a priest just admit the offence and take the punishment? They don't need to break the seal to plead guilty to a crime they know they are guilty of.

Okay, so Rev X is accused of not passing on the details of what Mr Y told him in the confessional and is asked "are you guilty of not passing on that Mr Y confessed his guilt to you" if he says "yes" he has broken the seal if he says "no" he may well be lying to the court so I believe his only course of action would be to refuse to answer.
Now the court may well draw an inference from that but I doubt if it would be enough to secure a conviction

mikedone

28064212 wrote: »

Lots of times it's impossible to prove a speeding charge. Lot of times it is possible to prove (beyond reasonable doubt) that someone had knowledge of child abuse

Do you think a law making it mandatory to pass on details of suspected child sexual abuse to authorities is a good idea?

Different point entirely, if victims of abuse come and tell the priest that Mr A or Fr B is abusing them then yes I believe that he does have a responsibility to report it but that does not involve breaking the seal of the confessional which is the point of this thread.
Similarly if the victim comes to the priest under the seal and passes on such information then I believe that he has a responsibility to advise that person to go to the authorities. If on the other hand he breaks the seal to pass on such information I fail to see how anyone would trust him again.

In answer to your second question I believe that anyone with knowledge of any crime should pass it on the relevant authorities. However I also believe in the adage that hard case make bad law.

dvpower

mikedone wrote: »

Okay, so Rev X is accused of not passing on the details of what Mr Y told him in the confessional and is asked "are you guilty of not passing on that Mr Y confessed his guilt to you" if he says "yes" he has broken the seal if he says "no" he may well be lying to the court so I believe his only course of action would be to refuse to answer.

In this case the seal is already broken; the penitent has broken it.
Can you not see how ludicrous this scenario is - the penitent himself is admitting what was said in the confessional, but the priest must continue the presence?

mikedone wrote: »

Now the court may well draw an inference from that but I doubt if it would be enough to secure a conviction

If I was on the jury, I'd convict.

mikedone

dvpower wrote: »

In this case the seal is already broken; the penitent has broken it.
Can you not see how ludicrous this scenario is - the penitent himself is admitting what was said in the confessional, but the priest must continue the presence?


If I was on the jury, I'd convict.

Whoever said religion had to make sense? The penitent is entitled to break the seal, the priest isn't.
I doubt if you would get the chance to convict tbh I was talking this through with a solicitor who does work for our company and he believes that the chances of a judge letting it go that far are slim. He also thinks such legislation would probably be struck down as it interferes so much with freedom of conscience and religion.

dvpower

mikedone wrote: »

Whoever said religion had to make sense? The penitent is entitled to break the seal, the priest isn't.

I agree it doesn't make sense. Lets not base our state laws on nonsense.

mikedone wrote: »

I doubt if you would get the chance to convict tbh I was talking this through with a solicitor who does work for our company and he believes that the chances of a judge letting it go that far are slim.

Your solicitor must be brilliant to be able to second guess a judge on some legislation that hasn't even been published yet.

mikedone wrote: »

He also thinks such legislation would probably be struck down as it interferes so much with freedom of conscience and religion.

Probably leave that call to the AG/SC

28064212

mikedone wrote: »

Different point entirely, if victims of abuse come and tell the priest that Mr A or Fr B is abusing them then yes I believe that he does have a responsibility to report it but that does not involve breaking the seal of the confessional which is the point of this thread.

Similarly if the victim comes to the priest under the seal and passes on such information then I believe that he has a responsibility to advise that person to go to the authorities. If on the other hand he breaks the seal to pass on such information I fail to see how anyone would trust him again.

It is entirely possible for things said in confession to be revealed at a later stage. It is entirely possible to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a priest received knowledge of child abuse and did not pass it on to the authorities (read the Cloyne report)

stanley 2

David Quinn: Where is the media frenzy when the State fails children?

Friday July 15 2011

HOW many people in Ireland know that the clerical abuse scandals peaked in the 1970s and 1980s? How many know that of the several hundred allegations received by the church in the last two years, almost none relate to incidents that happened in the last 10 years?

How many know that a large section of public opinion grossly overestimates the number of child abusers in the priesthood, as a Royal College of Surgeons survey some years ago ascertained?

How many know that Catholic priests are no more likely to abuse children than comparable groups, which is what 'Newsweek' magazine discovered when it contacted US insurance companies to determine whether they charged a higher risk premium for Catholic priests than for other clergy?

How many know that the Cloyne Report itself acknowledges that the church's child-protection guidelines are better than the State's guidelines? It says that compared with the church's guidelines, the State's are "less precise and more difficult to implement".

It would be safe to bet that only a small proportion of the public could correctly answer the above questions.

The reason for this is that our media have no interest in making the answers known so instead we have a public that believes the phenomenon of child abuse is a particularly and peculiarly Catholic one.

The Irish church has rightly been excoriated over its child-protection failings.

The Vatican is also in the firing line. It is in the firing line because it has never made the Irish church's child-protection policy a part of church, or canon law, thereby making it mandatory, and because it has opposed mandatory reporting of child abuse allegations.

But in these two regards, the State's failures are identical to the Vatican's. The Irish State's child-protection policy, Children First, is only now being given a statutory footing and only now is the State adopting a mandatory reporting policy.

So if the Vatican deserves to be in the firing line, so does the State. But it is not in the firing line to anything like the same extent. Why not?

In fact, the State's failings in the field of child protection are manifold but they have never resulted in anything like the coverage, and therefore in anything like the degree of public outrage, given to the church's failings.

For example, a few years ago the government released a three-volume report dealing with the implementation of Children First.

Of those surveyed for it, only 16pc said the Children First guidelines were working well. Only 27pc said that the guidelines in respect of the handling of abuse allegations received by the State were being properly adhered to.

Most incredibly of all, when asked whether the HSE and the gardai were "acting in accordance with the Children First guidelines", only 13pc said 'Yes'.

This is why child-protection expert Geoffrey Shannon told RTE's 'Morning Ireland' yesterday that the failure to properly implement Children First has been abject, and it is why he accused the HSE of adopting an "a la carte approach" to the guidelines.

Similarly, the new director for child and family services in the country, Gordon Jeyes, said recently that Ireland doesn't have "a proper child-protection system".

But while there has been huge pressure on the church to get its house in order, nothing like the same pressure has been put on the State, even though the State's failure to properly abide by its own guidelines has been abysmal.

Shannon is currently presiding over an investigation into the deaths of 200 children in the last 10 years who were in the care of the State, or who were known to the State's care services.

These deaths, from violence, suicide, drug overdose, from possibly preventable diseases, have received nothing like the publicity the church scandals have received, even though they are still happening.

Shannon's report is due out some time in the autumn. When it comes out, will there be a press conference presided over by government ministers as there was with the Cloyne Report?

Will RTE broadcast the press conference live? Will its programmes feature one inveterate critic of the HSE after another? Will the first 20 minutes of its news at both 6.01 and 9pm deal with the report as was the case on Wednesday when the Cloyne Report was published?

Will there be a 'Prime Time' special? Will RTE commission several emotionally charged, two-part documentaries cataloguing the circumstances in which some of the 200 children died?

Will HSE employees who abjectly failed to protect children have to resign, or at least be named, as has rightly happened in the case of the church? Will the RTE board ask the station why it gives so much coverage to the church's child-protection failings and so little to the State's failings by comparison?

The answer to all these questions is no, because the unpalatable truth is that the only child-protection failures deemed worthy of saturation coverage are the failures of the church.

Irish Independent

raymon

The church is an evil group of old men that protects paedophiles

and they do it. in gods name .

shame on them

Asry

Wowwww seriously could you not do that? That whole copy and paste thing, I mean. You didn't even leave a comment as to what you thought of that article or how that article was to add to this discussion or anything.

I was referring to Stanley 2.

who the fug

dvpower wrote: »

I would expect a priest to plead guilty of an offence he was guilty of.
Would you expect a priest to lie on oath (on a bible) to avoid a conviction?

They are but man, so I do expect them to lie

Asry

raymon wrote: »

The church is an evil group of old men that protects paedophiles

and they do it. in gods name .

shame on them

I do so love ignorant posts with sweeping generalisations on a Friday afternoon.

Onesimus

stanley 2 wrote: »

David Quinn: Where is the media frenzy when the State fails children?

Friday July 15 2011

HOW many people in Ireland know that the clerical abuse scandals peaked in the 1970s and 1980s? How many know that of the several hundred allegations received by the church in the last two years, almost none relate to incidents that happened in the last 10 years?

How many know that a large section of public opinion grossly overestimates the number of child abusers in the priesthood, as a Royal College of Surgeons survey some years ago ascertained?

How many know that Catholic priests are no more likely to abuse children than comparable groups, which is what 'Newsweek' magazine discovered when it contacted US insurance companies to determine whether they charged a higher risk premium for Catholic priests than for other clergy?

How many know that the Cloyne Report itself acknowledges that the church's child-protection guidelines are better than the State's guidelines? It says that compared with the church's guidelines, the State's are "less precise and more difficult to implement".

It would be safe to bet that only a small proportion of the public could correctly answer the above questions.

The reason for this is that our media have no interest in making the answers known so instead we have a public that believes the phenomenon of child abuse is a particularly and peculiarly Catholic one.

The Irish church has rightly been excoriated over its child-protection failings.

The Vatican is also in the firing line. It is in the firing line because it has never made the Irish church's child-protection policy a part of church, or canon law, thereby making it mandatory, and because it has opposed mandatory reporting of child abuse allegations.

But in these two regards, the State's failures are identical to the Vatican's. The Irish State's child-protection policy, Children First, is only now being given a statutory footing and only now is the State adopting a mandatory reporting policy.

So if the Vatican deserves to be in the firing line, so does the State. But it is not in the firing line to anything like the same extent. Why not?

In fact, the State's failings in the field of child protection are manifold but they have never resulted in anything like the coverage, and therefore in anything like the degree of public outrage, given to the church's failings.

For example, a few years ago the government released a three-volume report dealing with the implementation of Children First.

Of those surveyed for it, only 16pc said the Children First guidelines were working well. Only 27pc said that the guidelines in respect of the handling of abuse allegations received by the State were being properly adhered to.

Most incredibly of all, when asked whether the HSE and the gardai were "acting in accordance with the Children First guidelines", only 13pc said 'Yes'.

This is why child-protection expert Geoffrey Shannon told RTE's 'Morning Ireland' yesterday that the failure to properly implement Children First has been abject, and it is why he accused the HSE of adopting an "a la carte approach" to the guidelines.

Similarly, the new director for child and family services in the country, Gordon Jeyes, said recently that Ireland doesn't have "a proper child-protection system".

But while there has been huge pressure on the church to get its house in order, nothing like the same pressure has been put on the State, even though the State's failure to properly abide by its own guidelines has been abysmal.

Shannon is currently presiding over an investigation into the deaths of 200 children in the last 10 years who were in the care of the State, or who were known to the State's care services.

These deaths, from violence, suicide, drug overdose, from possibly preventable diseases, have received nothing like the publicity the church scandals have received, even though they are still happening.

Shannon's report is due out some time in the autumn. When it comes out, will there be a press conference presided over by government ministers as there was with the Cloyne Report?

Will RTE broadcast the press conference live? Will its programmes feature one inveterate critic of the HSE after another? Will the first 20 minutes of its news at both 6.01 and 9pm deal with the report as was the case on Wednesday when the Cloyne Report was published?

Will there be a 'Prime Time' special? Will RTE commission several emotionally charged, two-part documentaries cataloguing the circumstances in which some of the 200 children died?

Will HSE employees who abjectly failed to protect children have to resign, or at least be named, as has rightly happened in the case of the church? Will the RTE board ask the station why it gives so much coverage to the church's child-protection failings and so little to the State's failings by comparison?

The answer to all these questions is no, because the unpalatable truth is that the only child-protection failures deemed worthy of saturation coverage are the failures of the church.

Irish Independent

BRAVO DAVID QUINN:D

toby08

so do I especially when its for the most part true

alex73

smokingman wrote: »

Simple solution to this really, if a priest refuses to reveal information on the sexual abuse of a child, deport them back to Rome.

I know a lot of people on this forum believe their organisations rules somehow trump this countrys laws, but in reality, they don't.

You live in a country, you follow the laws of that entity.

Nothing to do with Rome. Its a central part of Faith in other church's not in communion with Rome.

alex73

toby08 wrote: »

may be I am just an idiot but a crime is a crime and child sex abuse particularly horrendous.if the catholic church is in any way serious about it then change canon law.If it is law in a country for example reporting crimes against children and a priest has knowledge through the confessional or otherwise he deserves a prison sentence for not reporting it.
In my personal view to save one child from abuse is worth getting thrown out of an uncaring church.

Seal of Confession goes back to the start of the church, its part of faith not only in Catholic Church but also on Orthodox Church.

Priests have died rather that give up what they heard in confession.

If you become a priest its pretty much laid out from the start that this is central to confession.

No matter how many laws Ireland brings in, the seal of confession will not change. And the day a judge puts a priest in Jail for it will be a sad one.


Rome or the Catholic Church has nothing to do with Seal of Confession.

raymon

Asry wrote: »

I do so love ignorant posts with sweeping generalisations on a Friday afternoon.

Which part is ignorant ? Which part is incorrect or inaccurate , I shall remove it immediately once you let me know my error

whydoibother?

I'm very disturbed by the suggestions that priests should warn the person that they would have to go to the authorities, or abandon the confession so as not to hear of abuse. Do these priests who are so concerned with the morality of breaking the seal of confession feel any moral duty to protect children that they could potentially help and if these responsibilities conflict, how do they work out that the breaking the seal of confession is a more serious moral wrong than doing nothing to stop a known abuser or willfully avoiding getting the information that could stop abuse?

alex73

whydoibother? wrote: »

I'm very disturbed by the suggestions that priests should warn the person that they would have to go to the authorities, or abandon the confession so as not to hear of abuse. Do these priests who are so concerned with the morality of breaking the seal of confession feel any moral duty to protect children that they could potentially help and if these responsibilities conflict, how do they work out that the breaking the seal of confession is a more serious moral wrong than doing nothing to stop a known abuser or willfully avoiding getting the information that could stop abuse?

And for arguments sack what if the Churchs changed the rules and said that priests will report sins heard in confession....

Do you think people would confess them then??.....


Look lets face it. We don't know if peodofiles go and confess their sins. I very much doubt they do or care about confession. If they knew they would be report.. do you honestly think they would confess?

whydoibother?

alex73 wrote: »

And for arguments sack what if the Churchs changed the rules and said that priests will report sins heard in confession....

Do you think people would confess them then??.....


Look lets face it. We don't know if peodofiles go and confess their sins. I very much doubt they do or care about confession. If they knew they would be report.. do you honestly think they would confess?

Well the law is only relevant if someone does confess, so I don't know how somebody who is completely convinced that priests would never hear a confession (which I am certainly not) would ever feel any need to object to the law.

Onesimus

The Taoiseach, the Minister for Justice and the Minister for Children are all indicating that a proposed new law will require priests to break the seal of confession if someone confesses to them the crime of paedophilia.
This would make us the one and only country in the Western world to have such a law. Even Revolutionary France in the days of its worst violence against the Church did not pass a law requiring the breaking of the seal of confession.

The justification for the law is that the crime of paedophilia is so heinous that no one who hears about it, under whatever circumstances, can be allowed to keep it to themselves.
But our Government is clearing missing something that every other Government can see, which is that at a minimum such a law is very unlikely to lead to a single conviction and at a maximum will be counter-productive and will make society less safe, rather than more safe.
It could equally be argued that a priest who hears a confession of murder must report it to the police. But if the murderer knew that priests were under such a legal requirement, the murderer would not make such a confession unless he was going to the police anyway.
On the other hand, a murderer who wishes to confess a crime to a priest, under the absolute seal of the confessional, is on the road to repentance and attending confession gives a priest the chance to encourage the murderer to turn himself over to the authorities or at the very least to cease his criminal activities.
The logic is the same with child abusers. No child abuser will go to a priest in confession knowing the priest is required to inform the police. But cutting off the avenue of confession to a child abuser makes it less likely that he will talk to someone who can persuade him to take the next step.
Various relationships in society are considered privileged and confidential. One is between a person and his or her confessor. Another is between a doctor and patient, and another is between a lawyer and client.
In creating a legal requirement that priests break the seal of confession under certain circumstances, the Irish State is going down a road very few other states in history have gone down. We need to seriously reconsider this extremely unwise and unprecedented proposal.
It says a lot about the present mood here that it can even be entertained.

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The Irish Catholic - July 14, 2011








Chinese bishops held

mikedone

dvpower wrote: »

I agree it doesn't make sense. Lets not base our state laws on nonsense.


Your solicitor must be brilliant to be able to second guess a judge on some legislation that hasn't even been published yet.


Probably leave that call to the AG/SC

Expressing an opinion on legal matters is pretty much what we pay solicitors for.

Asry

raymon wrote: »

Which part is ignorant ? Which part is incorrect or inaccurate , I shall remove it immediately once you let me know my error

....all of it. Saying "the Vatican are a group of old men who protect paedophiles" ... implies that the RCC is made up entirely only of old men who all set out every day to protect paedophiles. I mean. Really? What level of ridiculousness is that? That's like saying all women are sex-crazed monsters who really just want men so that they can have babies.

Evil? What is that, exactly? How very Dan Brown of you. Unless you're used to dealing with the world completely in black and white, you might have noticed that there is no such thing as absolutely evil, or absolutely good - just millions of shades of gray in between.

To label a certain group as evil, to scapegoat them, to see them as 'other' - this is wise? Would you say this isn't ignorant, in view of the fact that actions and words like those are what triggered off the Holocaust?

And how do you know in whose name certain people have done certain things? I'm not denying that yes, there are members of the clergy who have shielded their kiddyfiddling comrades when they should have turned them over to the police. I doubt they invoked the name of the Lord when they did it, though. And even if they did, how would we know? Unless you personally know a number of priests who protected other priests who were abusers of children, and they told you that yes, they did it for Jesus.

I'm not expecting the post to be removed. I just hope that people would think before they blurt out any inane thing that comes into their heads just because they have the wide world of the Internet before them.

Asry

Onesimus wrote: »

The Taoiseach, the Minister for Justice and the Minister for Children are all indicating that a proposed new law will require priests to break the seal of confession if someone confesses to them the crime of paedophilia.
This would make us the one and only country in the Western world to have such a law. Even Revolutionary France in the days of its worst violence against the Church did not pass a law requiring the breaking of the seal of confession.

The justification for the law is that the crime of paedophilia is so heinous that no one who hears about it, under whatever circumstances, can be allowed to keep it to themselves.
But our Government is clearing missing something that every other Government can see, which is that at a minimum such a law is very unlikely to lead to a single conviction and at a maximum will be counter-productive and will make society less safe, rather than more safe.
It could equally be argued that a priest who hears a confession of murder must report it to the police. But if the murderer knew that priests were under such a legal requirement, the murderer would not make such a confession unless he was going to the police anyway.
On the other hand, a murderer who wishes to confess a crime to a priest, under the absolute seal of the confessional, is on the road to repentance and attending confession gives a priest the chance to encourage the murderer to turn himself over to the authorities or at the very least to cease his criminal activities.
The logic is the same with child abusers. No child abuser will go to a priest in confession knowing the priest is required to inform the police. But cutting off the avenue of confession to a child abuser makes it less likely that he will talk to someone who can persuade him to take the next step.
Various relationships in society are considered privileged and confidential. One is between a person and his or her confessor. Another is between a doctor and patient, and another is between a lawyer and client.
In creating a legal requirement that priests break the seal of confession under certain circumstances, the Irish State is going down a road very few other states in history have gone down. We need to seriously reconsider this extremely unwise and unprecedented proposal.
It says a lot about the present mood here that it can even be entertained.

You said what's been in my head! But properly