One of the casualties of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was the confidentiality of the Catholic Sacrament of Penance — commonly called ‘the Seal of Confession’. The Catholic bishops who responded to the Commission were unable to convince the commissioners that the seal of confession should continue to be respected, Read more
A committee from Western Australia’s Legislative Council recommends preserving the confessional seal. In its report on the Children and Community Services Amendment Bill 2019, the Council’s legislation committee says: “Ministers of religion be excused from criminal responsibility [of mandatory reporting] only when the grounds of their belief is based solely on information disclosed during religious Read more
What’s said in the confessional stays in the confessional. It’s been a precept of the church for centuries. Penitents enter the booth to confess their sins and transgressions to a priest to receive spiritual comfort, advice and absolution. A forgiving of the sin in the eyes of God’s representative on Earth. But not in Victoria Read more
A long-awaited ecclesiastical trial for a priest who allegedly broke the seal of confession to inform members of a controversial lay group in Italy of a police investigation of their leader for sexual abuse of minors has been postponed indefinitely. The decision has not played well with alleged victims of the group and their families. Read more
The New Zealand Catholic Bishops’ Conference (NZCBC) is following the response of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference to some of the recommendations made by the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in its final report. The seal of Confession In a statement, the NZCBC says Confession is often not understood. “In many cases, the Read more
By the time ye are reading this I will possibly be roasting eternally already in the hottest corner of hell for having dreadfully broken the centuries-old sacred tradition of the Seal of Confession of the Catholic Church. Mighty priests and saints were burned at the stake in the past for refusing to break that seal, Read more
The Anglican Communion has demonstrated, yet again, how eager it is to keep up with changing times. In line with society’s greater recognition of the devastation wrought by child sexual abuse, a recent Synod has sought to remove any impediment to good professional practice and individual conscience by allowing individual priests to report on serious Read more
The confidentiality of the confessional will no longer stop Australian Anglican priests reporting serious crimes they hear in confession to police. Representatives of the Anglican Church of Australia approved this on July 2 at the church’s General Synod in Adelaide. The ruling covers serious offences that would attract a jail term of five years or more, Read more
As the controversy over the sexual abuse of children continues in Australia, politicians and editorial writers are calling for Catholic priests to be forced to break the seal of confession in sex-abuse cases. Independent Senator Nick Xenophon labeled the seal of confession an anachronism and told reporters: “This is a medieval law that needs to Read more