Angelus News | May 17, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 18

flates current reporting requirements
applied to state-licensed employees
— doctors, lawyers, and social workers,
to name a few examples — with those
of priests, who are not licensed by the
state.
“Unless Senator Hill is contending
that priests must be licensed by their
state, essentially he’s turning priests
into agents of the state, which is
precisely what the First Amendment
is meant to avoid,” said Pietrzyk. “It’s
hard to argue that this bill is anything
but a direct assault on the First Amendment.”
Pietrzyk said the bill’s authors do not
A
struggle
down under
Territories in
Australia last year
passed a law similar
to that being debated
in California. Despite scant
evidence that the seal of confession
had hampered any efforts to report
sexual abuse in the country, the law
was one of several passed following
a 2017 government commission report
on the sexual abuse of children
in the Church.
Australian priests have vowed to go
to jail rather than break the seal.
“What sexual abuser would confess
to a priest if they thought they
would be reported? If the seal is
removed, the remote possibility that
they would confess and so could
be counselled to report is gone,”
Archbishop Christopher Prowse of
Canberra and Goulburn wrote in
an essay last year.
“The Government threatens religious
freedom by appointing itself
an expert on religious practices and
by attempting to change the sacrament
of confession while delivering
no improvement in the safety of
children,” Prowse said.
seem to understand that the sacrament
of reconciliation is a communication
that is not like others broadly classified
as “penitential communications.”
Only confession, as understood by
Catholic church law, has an “absolute
inviolability,” meaning that the priest is
forbidden to disclose any information
gained in the sacrament, under pain of
excommunication from the Church.
While the proposed law focuses on
sexual abuse, this kind of legislation
can lead to a “slippery slope” in which
the state demands that priests disclose
other sinful actions that also happen to
be illegal.
“Surely murder, theft, spousal abuse,
child neglect, and rape are terrible
crimes,” wrote Los Angeles Auxiliary
Bishop Robert Barron in a May 7 Word
of Fire online article. “Would the state
determine that priests are obligated
to report these offenses to the authorities,
should they hear of them in the
confessional?”
Pietrzyk agrees.
“If the state of California can essentially
insert itself into the sacrament of
confession with regards to child abuse
issues, why can’t it insert itself into any
other issue it deems to be of public
importance to the state?”
Confession in other states
The campaign to force open the seal
of the confessional in cases of revelations
or claims of sexual abuse is not a
new one.
Currently there are seven states with
laws requiring priests to report information
gained solely in the confessional:
New Hampshire, North Carolina,
Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee,
Texas, and West Virginia.
Seven states in recent years have
tried to pass their own versions of a
“confessional bill” since 2002 but
have failed: Massachusetts (2002),
Kentucky (2003), Connecticut (2003),
New Hampshire (attempted to amend
the existing law in 2003 and 2006),
Maryland (2003), Nevada (2003), and
Florida (2003).
Church advocates in those states successfully
pointed out several problems
with the bills, such as the difficulty of a
priest identifying a penitent (since the
sacrament itself doesn’t require a person
to identify themselves), concerns
about government intrusion, and the
First Amendment’s protections regarding
the free exercise of religion.
Pietrzyk said there’s an argument to
be made that “mandatory reporting
laws can push people away from seeking
the help that they need, or from
coming forward” out of fear of the law.
Ultimately, however, he sees SB 360
as “opening the doorway to a greater
entanglement” in which “essentially
the state of California is forcing priests
to be agents of the state, even within
the confessional.”
But could that really happen in the
Golden State?
“I just don’t think any priest is going
to come forward as a mandatory reporter
for anything he hears in the sacrament
of confession,” said Pietrzyk.
“All it will have an effect in doing is
putting a cloud over innocent priests.
And I think that’s the real intent. My
fear is that’s the real intent, to scare the
Church. Because that’s the only effect
it’s going to have.”
Resisting SB 360
Leading efforts to resist SB 360 are
the California Catholic Conference
(CCC) and the Pacific Justice Institute
(PJI), an evangelical Christian probono
legal advocacy group active in
California.
In its statement against the bill, the
PJI argued such a law would do “little
to address the causes of such abuse
while sweeping away centuries of legal
protections.”
According to CCC Executive Director
Andy Rivas, the existing state law
requiring priests and ministers to be
mandated reporters is something that
his bosses — the state’s Catholic bishops
— “believe is right and important.”
“However, there is no evidence
that forcing priests to disclose what
is learned in the confessional would
prevent a single case of child abuse,”
Rivas told Angelus News.
“There is every reason to believe
that doing away with the privacy of
the confessional, a core principle of
our Catholic tradition and doctrine,
would create confusion, discourage
spiritual counseling, and deter many
from seeking a closer relationship with
God without gaining any protection for
children.”
12 • ANGELUS • May 17, 2019