A church that safeguards children can never justify an unconditional seal of confession

Sometimes it’s worth reminding ourselves that God is infinitely better than his supposed representatives on earth. The Catholic church, my own denomination, is one of the most striking cases in point.
No other church has ever claimed anything like the same extraordinary monopoly on the word of God, infallibly able to pronounce on everything from the correct way to interpret holy scripture, to the apparent proclamation of its infallibility, which fortuitously existed even for the period of more than 1800 years before it came to this divinely inspired understanding.
Yet as we know, the church has often failed to behave like one would expect of an all-knowing moral dictator with a unique insight to the will of the all good god. We need not concern ourselves with history, but point to the appalling sexual abuse of thousands of children across the globe, over many decades by Roman Catholic clergy, and the disgusting attempts to cover the matter up and thwart proper investigations.

The church now occasionally makes pronouncements about this. One will hear prayers that the church will respond with tender love to those wounded by the church. Apparently, “those raped by our priests” is a bit too distasteful a way to express it.

Am I being harsh? Has the church, so overbearing about the sin of us mere mortals, itself truly repented? I’m afraid not!

  A controversy is now raging in California, where a bill, S.B. 360, is now going through the legislative process. It aims to remove the exemption to disclose concerns about the sexual abuse of children, where that suspicion arises within a penitential context.
For the non-Catholic, we must back up and explain a bit. The Catholic church asserts that the forgiveness of sins by Christ is bound to the sacrament of reconciliation, more popularly known as confession. In the case of serious or ‘mortal’ sins, one’s relationship to God is completely broken, and forgiveness must be sought by confession. All offences that the person is aware of must be reported. The priest then offers a penance, which in most cases is little more than saying a few prayers, and absolves the penitent of their sins.

As priests are there to mediate Christ’s forgiveness and it is Christ, through his priest, that is doing the forgiving, priests are duty-bound by a seal never to repeat what is heard in the confessional. They take this extremely seriously. Over the centuries, priests have been martyred for honouring the seal of confession.

S.B. 360 would remove the exemption to a priest’s legal requirement to disclose any relevant information on the basis of it having been heard in a penitential act. In other words, it poses a direct threat to the seal of the confessional.

Catholics are fuming! Writing in the Catholic Herald, a publication that would ask how high no matter how Silly Rome’s request to jump, Michael Warren Davis writes:

“One must wonder what other Catholic practices will be deemed problematic by the California senate. The all-male priesthood, perhaps, or the refusal to celebrate same-sex marriages? We’ll have to wait and see.”

Bishop Michael Barber is reported in National Catholic Register as saying:

“I will go to jail before I will obey this attack on our religious freedom. Even if this bill passes, no priest may obey it. The protection of your right to confess to God and have your sins forgiven in total privacy must be protected.”

There is so much that is deeply unattractive here. Alarming is the paranoid and ridiculous belief that religious freedom is being attacked. This, it seems, is a bigger issue than the sexual abuse of children and the desire that should be paramount in all but the deeply psychologically dysfunctional to leave no stone unturned in the safeguarding of children, who of course have no freedom or choice when they are abused.

Would I see it as worthwhile to infringe upon a person’s right to get it off their chest, assured of anonymity, in order to carry on molesting some more? You bet I would.

Warren Davis goes on to cite Archbishop José Gómez’s argument:

“Hearings on the bill have not presented a single case – in California or anywhere else – where this kind of crime could have been prevented if a priest had disclosed information he had heard in Confession.”
Does the man think we’re idiots? First, the case of Father Michael McArdle of Queensland Australia has been cited by the bill’s sponsor, Senator Gerry Hill. McArdle has claimed that over a quarter of a century he confessed 1000 times to 30 priests about the molestation of children. Those numbers speak for themselves.

I’m not sure whether I am more sickened by the number of children, the possibility that some must have been abused on multiple occasions, or just how many times those priests must have absolved McArdle knowing very well that he either could not, or would not, stop himself hurting children.
Second, if Archbishop Gómez were correct that we have no knowledge of crimes that could have been prevented, we equally have no way of finding out why that is. Why would we have heard of these cases if the confessions are secret? How typical of the Catholic church to insist upon a standard of proof that its own deplorable actions have made impossible.

If all of this isn’t bad enough, I remind you of my earlier explanation that Christ’s forgiveness must be mediated through the priest. Since that priest is acting in the person of Christ at that moment, he is able to absolve you no matter the state of his own moral character.

No matter how much you have studied God’s word, prayed and genuinely worked to make amends for your wrongs, it won’t do. But words of absolution from Michael McArdle would do the trick, or indeed from the cretinous Archbishop Gómez, or anyone who heard McArdle’s repeated confessions but continued to send him packing with a few Hail Maries and license to carry on as before.

I am not against confession. I made my first confession on 25 October 2003, when I was 14. It was a beautiful experience. The priest listened, helped me to see the consequences of what I had told him and how to act better next time. Hearing a man I trusted, respected and looked up to, assuring me of Jesus’s forgiveness, and professing before this holy man my own act of contrition and sorrow, was a moving experience that touched my soul.

Confession is a wonderful antidote to the astonishing arrogance of those Christian groups who believe that once one is called by God, one is always saved no matter what. Speaking our sins aloud, examining our conscience and professing our sorrow before another person leaves one nowhere to hide. We are very good at burying shame and guilt, even when approaching God. Trust me, when you’re about to go to confession you suddenly start remembering everything!

This exercise is why the Bible encourages the early church members to confess sins to one another. It makes us all face our misdeeds and strive to be better.
But confession is not, in my opinion, the only way to forgiveness. Nor do I believe that the church has any basis for deciding which sins are so serious that damnation is inevitable unless they are absolved through confession.

Confession should work for the good of individuals and the good of the church. Yet surely, if there is even a chance that its special seal has helped maintain a wall of silence that has or even could facilitate the avoidable abuse of children, it is not doing a social good. The church’s willingness to forgive and forget makes a mockery of its wish to heal the wounds its rogue elements have inflicted.
Can the vast majority of decent, dedicated clergymen, committed to a life of service, really sleep at night if they really think they could let the likes of McArdle carry on a deplorable cycle of sinning and confessing? Do they honestly believe they could turn a blind eye?
I hope, and indeed I pray, that they would find, if faced with such a situation, that they would do the right thing and prevent harm. Surely they would look in their hearts and see that the God they know and love wouldn’t wish for anyone to abuse the incredible priestly privilege of representing him in any way, least of all to our most vulnerable?

I am not optimistic that the clergy will rise up and say no to a seal of silence at any cost. Rome’s authoritarian finality over what’s what, is as strong as ever. A loyal laity so cowed by the trumping of infallible dogma over whatever nonsense their consciences might entertain, will continue to praise the likes of Barber and Gómez, backed by the whining paranoid Catholic media machine so exemplified by the complaints of Warren Davis.

Those of us who think differently will simply have to make the case when and wherever we can, within and outside the church, to whoever will listen.

The slavishly loyal to Rome do not care how much you preface any discussion with how much you love the church, contribute to its work, foster a relationship with God and sincerely want to see the church be the very best it can be. You are a cafeteria Catholic.

They are, for now, beyond reach. But I am utterly unconvinced that they represent the overwhelming majority of Catholics.
I say that it is God alone who does not have to earn our loyalty. Broadly, the scandal of clerical sexual abuse has shattered the untarnished image many devotees had of the Catholic church. For my part, it most certainly has my loyalty, but it does not have my conscience. It will not get my silence where its actions are profoundly misguided.

A church that safeguards children can never justify an unconditional seal of confession.