Catholic Bishops Refute Logic Behind New Washington State Child Abuse Law

Should the Roman Catholic sacrament of confession be turned into a form of law enforcement surveillance?
 
That is exactly what a new Washington State law does, requiring Roman Catholic priests to report any knowledge of child abuse that emerges during confession.
 
The author of this law, state Sen. Noel Frame, said she could not “stomach any argument about religious freedom being more important than preventing … abuse,” that it was “traumatizing to have colleagues … tell me to my face that religious freedom is more important than protecting children,” and “you never put somebody’s conscience above the protection of a child.”
 
An eloquent brief before a federal court in Tacoma, Washington, from Catholic bishops makes both a passionate and practical case demonstrating why Sen. Frame’s argument and this new law is wrong-headed. It harms both the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion while taking away the prime means the Church has of disciplining and stopping child abusers.
 
As a law intended to protect children, it scores an own goal. Here are a few choice excerpts from the bishops’ brief.
 
The Washington State law presents priests with a “Hobson’s choice” between eternal damnation and criminal prosecution.
 
“A priest who directly violates the sacramental seal incurs a latae sententiae excommunication – i.e., automatic excommunication – thereby risking eternal damnation. Accordingly, the historical record is replete with examples of Catholic priests choosing death as martyrs rather than succumbing to government demands that they violate the sacramental seal.”
 
It overturns a principle recognized in American law for more than 200 years.
 
The new law “runs directly counter to longstanding caselaw recognizing the confessional seal as part of the Catholic Church’s autonomy protected by the First Amendment. For example, in People v. Philips, one of the earliest-known religious freedom cases in the United States, the Court of General Sessions of New York City refused to force a Catholic priest to testify in a criminal case about what he heard in the Sacrament of Confession …
 
“As that court observed, ‘The sinner will not confess, nor will the priest receive his confession, if the veil of secrecy is removed.’”
 
The new law violates the First Amendment’s free exercise clause by replacing church governance with government regulation.
 
“The Sacrament of Confession and the meting out of penance is one of the means by which the Catholic Church disciplines its members. By requiring that Catholic priests disclose what they hear in confession, Washington is directly intruding upon, and chilling, that form of discipline.”
 
It singles out priests while exempting lawyers, law school clinics, and others.
 
In addition to lawyers, the new law exempts parents, domestic partners, and family members. It simply targets priests.
 
Above all, the new law will hurt, not help, the reporting of child abuse and rescue of children from dangerous situations.
 
“Moreover, when the priests in each diocese, including all Plaintiffs, hear confessions involving sins of child abuse or neglect, they could counsel the penitent to self-report and obtain the necessary temporal intervention and help.
 
“And priests in each diocese, including all Plaintiffs, who suspect based on what is disclosed during confession that the penitent is suffering from abuse or neglect, the penitent has engaged in abuse or neglect, or some third party has engaged in abuse or neglect, could invite the penitent for counseling outside of the Sacrament of Confession and, if the penitent agrees to that counsel, the priest must report any information learned in that counseling session required to be reported by diocesan policies …”
 
When the law requires priests to report child abusers to the police, no child abuser will confess. And without a confession, no priest can impose discipline by requiring the penitent to go to counseling and to turn himself into the police. It is the Washington State law that removes those tools to protect children that should make one sick to the stomach.

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