SEAL OF CONFESSION THREATENED IN AUSTRALIAN CLERGY SEXUAL ABUSE PROBE

In a story reported on Australian news services comes this rather disturbing development.

The Child Abuse Royal Commission soon will collide with the Catholic Church over the confidentiality of the confessional when it holds a public inquiry into the disproportionately high numbers of abusive Priests.

Evidence has come before the Commission suggesting that as many as 13 per cent of Catholic Priests in Australia orders may be perpetrators of the sexual abuse of minors.  In February, 2017, the Commission will hold a three-week hearing in February to investigate what has led to this level of abuse and ­governed its cover-up over the years by the Catholic hierarchy.

Evidence gathered in case studies, submissions and private hearings to date has led the Commission to target the role of the Vatican, canon law, celibacy and the use of secrecy.  However, it is the Commission’s concern with the Sacrament of Confession that is likely to prove the most contentious.

The Bishops and the Church are expected to hold the line on the sanctity of the confessional during February’s hearings.  This will likely place them at odds with the Commission, which this week published a ­report criticising the Jehovah’s Witnesses for using Christian doctrine to avoid reporting ­admissions of abuse to police.

“The Royal Commission will consider further the issue of the protection of the confessional in a later public hearing,” its Chairperson said recently.  In response, Archbishop Hart of Melbourne stated  the sanctity of what was mentioned to a Priest during the sacrament of confession was “inviolate in the Catholic Church throughout the world”.

Over the past four years, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard evidence of children being abused during confession and of bishops failing to act, or actively protecting priests they knew to be abusers.

A similarly damning investigation of the Church in Ireland led the government to announce laws in 2011 to punish priests who failed to report abuse admitted to during confession by up to five years in jail.

In 2012, following the ­announcement of the royal commission, several senior Australian politicians called for similar law be enacted.

At present, Priests who learn about abuse while hearing confessions are exempt from Victorian legislation making it an offense not to disclose to police information about the sexual abuse of a minor. 

Frank Brennan, a Jesuit priest and professor of law at the Australian Catholic University, said: “If a law is introduced to say that a Priest should reveal a confession, I’m one of those Priests who will disobey the law.”

As took place in Ireland over five years ago, a showdown is brewing now in Australia over the inviolability of the Seal of Confession.  We shall keep abreast of any news coming from Australia about this  and revisit the matter in February or as further developments warrant.