I was asked earlier today what I thought about the practice of confession as a safe-space for criminals to confess crimes, where the Priest listening is not legally bound to report any transgressions to the authorities.
I’ve heard rumblings of a debate surrounding this issue in Australian media – the example given is if a paedophile admits to a crime in a Church confessional, the Priest is not currently required to report these findings to the police, but there is an argument being pushed that this become a legally enforced practice.
In short, my own knowledge of this issue extends about that far. I haven’t looked into the details at all, but I will here relay what I first posited about the issue with the intent of recording my initial thoughts on digital paper.
Once asked, I pondered over an answer for the better part of 15-20 seconds, and decided that I would be against the establishment of legal requirements for mandatory reporting. My reasoning is that I believe in a separation of church and state, according to democratic secularism within our nation and others like ours (perhaps based on French 18th Century values post-revolution? Unsure). Legally requiring priests and religious officials to report details of a confession to state authorities to me represents a breach of this tradition, and a clear instance of a line crossed.
Having said that, I do not currently have an idea of which path would be of greater overall benefit to society; it could be argued that if legal requirements were introduced, paedophiles and the like would simply avoid going to confession, but I don’t know whether being denied this moral release would impact upon their decisions or not.
In terms of religious freedoms, I do think potential such legislation would result in a strong outcry from conservative commentators, and with good reason, but in the interest of finding the answer as to whether or not this is a good idea, I couldn’t say.
Anyway, those are my views at present.
TJDempsey 