The Catholic Church has issued a warning to its clergy in Washington state: Any priest who complies with a new law requiring the reporting of child abuse confessions to authorities will be excommunicated.
https://www.newsweek.com/catholic-church-excommunicate-priests-following-new-us-state-law-2069039
Yeah religion is a great cover for abusing kids.
This isn’t about priests abusing kids (though that’s definitely a recurring issue as well), it’s about people who have done so confessing such to a priest.
I’m not religious so don’t really have any stake in this, but it’s interesting that it is specifically about child sex abuse and not other major crimes such as rape, murder etc. That makes me worried as “for children” is often used as a testing ground for stuff that will be expanded upon later, and there’s a lot of stuff people likely confess - supposedly under strict confidence - to their religious figures.
Confession is about reconciliation with god and anyone that comes to ask forgiveness from their deity should be willing to make it right with the people they hurt by taking responsibility and accepting the consequences in a tangible way rather than thoughts and prayers.
I agree - and I would hope any advice given by a priest would cover this - but if it becomes a mandatory thing where does it end. Should priests report abortions in states that have made then illegal? How about sheltering an undocumented immigrant, or any number of things that the current administration might decide they don’t like?
No, and the difference is that reporting pedophilia isn’t a slippery slope to criminalizing human rights. The source of the problem is completely unrelated.
You can’t make diddling a child right, ever. But man, so glad diddy had something named after him…
Along with the laity, priests must also go to confession. So it does provide cover for priests abusing kids.