We need to question the duty of priests not to disclose anything they learn from penitents

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We need to question the duty of priests not to disclose anything they learn from penitents 

14 September 2017 | by Sara Maitland This is not a cheerful column. In the past few weeks a very dark topic has come up for me and I want us all to think about it. It is “the seal of the confessional” and the sense that too many of the hierarchy still, despite everything, do not seem to “get it” when it comes to sexual abuse.
For example, the Archbishop of Glasgow, Philip Tartaglia, speaking recently to a conference of priests in Philadelphia, appeared to pin some of the blame for the abuse scandal on the media, which had reported it “many times fairly, but many times not”. Is that “wishy-washy” (which is what he’s accused the Scottish laity of being) or what?

There are nine sins that lead to automatic excommunication. They are not murder, not rape, not enslavement and not the sexual exploitation of a minor. They are, in fact, apostasy, heresy, schism, violating the sacred species (this means the Eucharistic sacrament, not the baptised Homo sapiens), physically attacking the Pope, sacramentally absolving an accomplice in a sexual sin (a priest cannot absolve his own sexual partner), consecrating a bishop without authorisation, procuring an abortion and violating the seal of confession.
It is the last of these nine that I want to think about. A priest who hears about sexual abuse in the confessional cannot even stop the abuser from being the scoutmaster or youth group leader.
He cannot report the abuser to anyone – not to the bishop, not to the police, not to the parents. He can, of course, refuse absolution, but he cannot do anything to protect the abused. Nor can the confessor tell anyone that he has not absolved the penitent, let alone why not.
I have heard people propose that the confessor could require the individual to self-report to, say, the police as a sign of genuine repentance and willingness to make reparation, and therefore a proper condition of absolution. But under the present canons there is nothing a confessor can do to check up that such reparation has been made, or indeed that the so-called penitent has not just slipped round the corner and found a more “sympathetic” (!) priest to absolve him.
Perhaps I am unnecessarily cynical here; given how few Catholics still make use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation it may seem unlikely that the confessionals are crammed full of dishonest penitents, sliming round the realities and getting absolved “on the cheap” while burdening their confessors with a terrible dilemma. But it really does matter. Abuse is a horrible offence by the powerful against the powerless and its corrosive damage
is too well known to gloss over. All the evidence tells us that the most helpful attention an abused person can be offered is the chance to be heard and believed. It takes courage to “speak out”; recognising this, recently the police have publicly thanked the victims of sexual abuse at the end of successful trials. We as a church are being far less supportive.
I am, as I have said here before, a “practising” penitent, a user of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I have always valued the security and safety that the seal – and the importance that has been afforded it – have offered me. But, sadly, we do need to reopen the question of the absolute duty of priests not to disclose anything that they learn from penitents during the course of the Sacrament of Penance (last addressed as far as I can determine in 1151 – although that decision was reaffirmed in the 1983 Code of Canon Law). Various other bodies have moved towards a more nuanced approach to confidentiality.
Qualified psychotherapists, for example, will commit themselves at the beginning of a relationship to confidentiality except in the case of criminality. Crime and sin are, obviously, not quite the same, but there is a distinct overlap.
This is a conversation that only the laity can have – or at least is pretty pointless without the laity. On the whole, it is the laity who are abused and the laity who are the parents of the abused. In all other contexts the Church has put a hefty (if proper) burden of responsibility on parents. Moreover, we have clear evidence, in the resignations from the Vatican’s commission into clerical abuse and its cover-up, that the laity cannot have confidence in the hierarchy on this issue. This is sad. I would be sad to lose the tender protection and care of the seal. But if that might mean that even one child was protected from abuse (by any adult – of course it is not just priests who abuse) I think that is a sadness I may, as a disciple, just have to live with.
Sara Maitland is a novelist and writer.