By Matt
Lamb
OLYMPIA, Washington (LifeSiteNews) — A bill in
Washington that would force priests to violate the Seal of Confession is dead.
“SB 6298 has not been scheduled for an executive session, and thus
will not be moving forward this session,” Washington State Catholic Conference
spokeswoman Adrienne Joyce told LifeSiteNews this afternoon.
Under the proposed law, “clergy [have] a duty to warn the
department or law enforcement when they have reasonable cause to believe that a
child is at imminent risk of being abused or neglected, even if that belief is
informed by information obtained in part as a result of a penitential
communication.”
Breaking the Seal of Confession is an excommunicable offense.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
Given the delicacy and greatness of this ministry and the respect
due to persons, the Church declares that every priest who hears confessions is
bound under very severe penalties to keep absolute secrecy regarding the sins
that his penitents have confessed to him. He can make no use of knowledge that
confession gives him about penitents’ lives. This secret, which admits of no
exceptions, is called the ‘sacramental seal,’ because what the penitent has
made known to the priest remains ‘sealed’ by the sacrament.
Legislative staffers confirmed the bill’s status in phone
interviews with LifeSiteNews prior to Joyce’s email, as did the Diocese of
Spokane. The diocese said the bill was “dead.”
Democratic Senator Noel Frame wrote the “compromise” bill this
year alongside the WSCC, according to comments she made during last Friday’s
hearing. While she wanted to eliminate all exemptions, she said this was the
strongest bill she could currently pass.
Her communications director told LifeSiteNews this afternoon that
the bill is all but dead.
“Today is the deadline for it to be passed out of committee,” Alex
Bond said in a phone interview. “So, if it does not pass out of committee by
the end of the day today, it is dead.”
While there is “one committee meeting” left today, it is
“currently not on the schedule to do so.”
Republican Senator Phil Fortunato, a Catholic, opposed the bill. A
staffer in his office told LifeSiteNews the bill is almost dead too.
It is “at a standstill” and has not been reassigned to a different
committee since the February 16 hearing. “When it’s not referred, it should be
considered dead,” the staffer told LifeSiteNews on a phone call today, saying
the bill has until Friday to officially die. LifeSite had asked for comment
prior to getting the conference’s response.
Fortunato had criticized the Catholic Conference’s advocacy in
support of the bill.
He wrote a letter, reviewed by LifeSiteNews, that shared his “grave
concerns” about the conference’s “neutral” position on a provision that would
require priests to violate the Seal of Confession in some circumstances.
The WSCC stated that it took
“a neutral position on the ‘in part’ language because the broader exemption for
penitential communications in the bill is critical to protect the Sacrament of
Confession from state intrusion.”
“The duty to warn is such an intrusion,” the conference
acknowledged, but claimed that it “can be avoided by following Safe Environment
policies and pastoral care of a penitent confessing to ongoing sinfulness.”
The conference also said that a priest could ask a penitent who
confesses to abuse to “visit with him or another mandatory reporter outside of
the confessional.”
Fortunato questioned this logic in his letter to the conference.
“Why would someone ‘visit’ with a mandatory reporter if they knew
they would be turned in? They simply would not go to confession and therefore
not get the counseling to make amends for their actions,” he wrote. “If a
priest hears something in confession and then gains other knowledge outside the
confessional that together with the knowledge from confession, they now have a
‘duty to-warn.'”
He said this duty “is totally unenforceable, subjective and
requires the priest to know who the penitent is.”
Fortunato failed to get his amendment passed
that would “[affirm] that the knowledge which provides the basis for a duty to
warn is not obtained in the context of a penitential communication.”
Catholic Conference doesn’t
represent views of all bishops
Though the Catholic Conference purports to represent the views of
the bishops, Spokane Bishop Thomas Daly opposed Senate Bill 6298.
Bp. Daly criticized a “misunderstanding” about the Seal of
Confession, noting that a priest can withhold absolution if there is not a
clear sign of “remorse,” last Friday on the Dr. Tom Curran Podcast.
Confession is “not a way to protect criminals,” the prelate said.
Priests are already required by the bishops in Washington and by
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops rules to report
child abuse allegations obtained outside of the confessional.
“I’m always amazed when, for example, laws look specifically
focusing on the Catholic Church, and yet we have institutions that have contact
with far more young people, for example, the public schools – where is the
scrutiny in the public schools on the protection of children?” the bishop
asked.
“I think this is the wrong path to protect children,” he said.
He called on the “lay faithful” to “please contact your elected
official and tell them your feelings about this thing” and to say this is the
“wrong path” to “protect children.”
“No one provides more care for young people in education, in
health care, social services than the Catholic Church. And yet our voice, I
think at times, is dismissed,” he said.
He reiterated that SB 6298 is “not the path to follow.”
Though the Catholic Conference worked alongside Frame on the bill,
the two took diverging views.
Sen. Frame said that a bill without exemptions for priests could
not pass this year.
Yet, the Catholic Conference said “advocates are pushing for an
amendment to this bill that would eliminate the exemption altogether, placing
the priest in violation of the law in all circumstances where there is a
confession of past or present abuse,” suggesting a no-exemptions law could
pass.
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