"Forced" so... you dont want to volunteer report information that can save children from abuse... jesus must be very proud.
this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
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Originally Posted By u/Ok_Presentation_940 At 2025-06-03 06:47:38 PM | Source
confessionals are supposed to be confidential...
Therapy is also supposed to be confidential but exceptions are made when someone is in danger.
Everyone knows an abusive adult's privacy is more important than abused children
It's ironically one of the main things that Shouldn't be confidential.
So it's ok to let child abuse go on as long as it's just talked about in a confessional?
There's only one kind of person who wouldn't be on board with this
Lmao fuckin christ, they just wanna cosplay and abuse the weak not snitch on the bros. Stuck 2 the code huh
God isn't real. Religion is a control mechanism.
Report every child abuser and prosecute them to the fullest. Including clergy.
Here's the thing - priests are perfectly willing to go to jail over this. The seal of confession is extremely important to Catholic practice, and a priest would rather go to jail than break it. I am not a Catholic, but the seal of confession has been long respected by US law as it pertains to religious freedom, and it's such a long established part of Catholic practice that it's hard to imagine Catholic life without it. I think this is a serious blow to religious freedom, even if I don't personally agree with the practice it is attacking. Realistically all this will do, even in the "best case" scenario where priests actually comply, is make people not confess to these things in the first place. From a civil standpoint this is essentially equivalent to the situation where confession is sealed, but according to Catholic beliefs this is horrible as it removes the possibility of redemption for the perpetrator. Now you or I might think that child abuse is an unforgivable sin worthy of eternal damnation with no possibility of forgiveness, but that's not what Catholics believe. They believe that everyone should have a chance to confess their sins and atone for them, which is impossible without telling a priest about them.
breaking the seal of confession is an automatic excommunication. No-one need to even recognise this, the priest just needs to know that they are doing it. The moment they break it they are no longer a priest nor part of the church
If that prevents them from defending victims of child abuse, they and their church are monstrous, evil, and anathema to civilised society, and need to be kept as far away as possible from it and other human beings to prevent them from causing further harm.
there are no conditions
Pope can change this rule.he doesn't want to protect the children?
Wrong perspective. FOR FUCKS SAKE.
Fuck. You. All.
Every. Last. One. Of. You.
Burn.
Do you know what you're arguing about?
A 10 yr old child gets fucked in the ass. For example.
Fuck forgiveness.
Fuck tolerance.
Oh, we must respect "insert evil here", or "confession"
.
Here's the thing - priests are perfectly willing to go to jail over this.
Good. Throw those pederasts in jail and melt the key.
Bear in mind, this discussion isn't about priests committing sexual crimes against minors, it's about them being required by law to disregard their sincerely held religious practices that have been part of their religion for thousands of years if they receive confession to someone who committed a crime like this.
Your excuse makes no sense. Religion is no excuse for pederasty (or for anything, really). If they need to be forced by law to denounce abuse, something they should already be doing due to basic human decency and common sense, they're evidently evil and harmful to society, as is anyone who defends them, and need to be kept separate from it to avoid them causing more harm. If they don't denounce the pederasts they know about they're necessary accomplices, and therefore pederasts themselves. Lock them up and melt the key.
I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I feel like, if somebody admits to molesting a child to a priest, then the priest should report that to the correct legal people to deal with that.
But on the other hand, as a person who has religious practices ingrained into my behavior, I can understand, it's like I don't imagine that the people that are evil pedophiles are the kind of people to go and brag about it with their pastor.
What the ideal scenario in this case would be is that the pedophile confesses to the priest and then turns themselves in.
The next best scenario would be that the pedophile confesses to the priest, and then at least does not ever commit pedophilia again.
I'm not expecting clemency for pedophiles. Don't get me wrong.
But making it so that pedophiles can't even confess their sins without immediately being hauled off to The nearest jail cell is not going to actually decrease the amount of pedophilia in the world. Instead, it's going to convince pedophiles with religious leanings to accept that their souls are condemned to hell and some of them are gonna choose to go out with a bang.
There's another possible scenario of a child making the confession because they're feeling guilty about the sexual act despite being a victim.
That is a good point.
I can't imagine that the current confessional protections apply in that scenario.
Any priest who would hear a confession from a child who was sexually assaulted and then hides it should probably go to jail themselves.
what if the child doesn't want the abuser to be punished, should the victim not have that right regardless of their mental wellbeing?
Nope. Child sexual abuse doesn't work that way.
Most child sexual abuse is done in a way that is pleasurable for the child, by people the child loves and cares about.
They by default will almost certainly not want their abuser to be punished, but this is the one thing that shouldnt be allowed.
Why?
Because most people who sexually abuse a child do not stop at one child. It's not just about punishing the pedo for the act, it's also about stopping them from pedoing again.
That's why we have sex offender registries.
I'm of a similar mind about mandatory reporting for pedophilic urges from mental health professionals. Obviously actual child abuse is different, but mandatory reporting disincentivizes non-acting pedophiles from sharing their feelings and maybe finding a way to cope. Mandatory reporting replaces the potential for treatment with near-certain societal suicide, so they'll keep those urges bottled up, where they can grow strong enough to drive them to child abuse.
I think it's much better to take a pragmatic approach designed to reduce child abuse, than a zero-tolerance moral approach unmotivated by results.
True, even though I get it, the idea that we should abandon our humanity and become bloodthirsty savages with the slightest amount of justification is truly bizarre.
I get that we want to punish evil people and the easiest way to identify an evil person is when they harm children. Despite my wanting to be a better person, I do not feel bad when a father murders a pedophile that victimized their child.
But despite that, I feel like we should at try to do a little better.
It's easy to villainize child abusers, because they're definitely villains. I'm talking more about those who haven't harmed children, just feel the urge to. Early detection is key to prevention.
When they refer to the Constitution they're talking about specific wording in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." They claim that priests keeping crimes confessed to them private falls under "free exercise therof", since this confidentiality is part of their religion.
But historically the Supreme Court has sided against religious practices that conflict with other provisions of the Constitution or violate accepted laws. Take polygamy, for example - in Reynolds vs United States (1879) the Court ruled that laws prohibiting polygamy do not violate the First Amendment. This is why you can't just set up a religion that practices human sacrifice or makes shoplifting an act of worship.
The Bishopβs objection to the law is that there is no exemption for information learned in Confession ceremony specifically.
I donβt see any objection in the article for reporting information gathered anywhere else.
The Bishopβs objection to the law is that there is no exemption for information learned in Confession ceremony specifically.
imho it doesn't matter.
I've always thought Christianity was a pedophile religion. It's nice to see the Catholic Church fully admitting that.