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A US priest no longer has permission to hear confessions after he published an opinion piece supporting a bill that would remove legal protections for the confessional seal.
The faculty to hear confession and offer absolution was withdrawn immediately by Fr James Connell’s archbishop.
The ban extends beyond his Archdiocese of Milwaukee; it applies in the Catholic Church around the world.
Priests are required to have faculties from a diocesan bishop to hear confessions and confer sacramental absolution validly.
The only exception would be if Connell (pictured centre) were with a penitent in immediate danger of death.
Connell, 80, is retired. His priestly career included stints as a diocesan curial official and as a parish pastor.
He is also a canon lawyer and a long-time advocate for clerical sexual abuse victims.
His op-ed (opinion piece) in the Delaware News Journal, voiced support for a bill in the Delaware legislature that would strip legal protection from the confessional seal.
Priests would have to report knowledge or suspicion of child abuse and neglect gleaned from the confessional.
“No institution in our society, not even a recognised religion, has a significant advantage over governments’ compelling interest and responsibility to protect its children from harm by abuse or neglect.
“Thus, no valid freedom of religion argument rooted in the absence of truth can provide a moral justification for sheltering perpetrators of abuse or neglect of children from their deserved punishment while also endangering potential victims,” the priest wrote.
“Governments should intervene such that, while perhaps frustrating the free exercise of religion for some people, the greater good of protecting children from abuse or neglect would be enhanced for the common good of all people,” he added.
Identifying himself as a priest, Connell urged all Delaware people to support the bill repealing Delaware’s clergy-penitent privilege statute.
The Catholic Church teaches that the seal of confession is “inviolable”.
It exists to ensure those who wish to repent of their sin are free to do so without any risk that their confessions might be subsequently used against them.
Confessors cannot disclose information learned in the sacrament even with permission of penitents. A direct disclosure of confessional material carries with it the canonical penalty of excommunication.
Connell’s archbishop, Jerome Listecki, says Connell’s writing on the subject has “caused understandable and widespread unrest among the people of God, causing them to question if the privacy of the confessional can now be violated, by him or any other Catholic priest”.
He asserted the inviolability of the sacrament as a matter of moral obligation.
Theologian and canonist Fr Felix Capello SJ, agrees. He wrote “the practice of the Church” demonstrates the moral obligation of the canonical seal “in not acknowledging any power, even that of the Roman Pontiff, on any occasion or from any motive, of dispensing from this law”.
Capello noted that numerous Fathers of the Church also spoke of a moral duty to clerical silence on matters confessed directly to priests and otherwise unknown.
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