Bill requiring priests to report child-abuse confessions to police is pulled

From California-

A bill that would have required members of the clergy to report information to police that they received about child abuse and neglect during private confessions has been pulled by its author, state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo.

The action came in the wake of an all-out effort by California Catholics to derail the bill, SB360. In a letter read at every Mass in San Francisco and San Mateo counties on June 23, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said, “For Catholics, confession is sacred, and the ability to confess our sins confidentially is essential to our religious belief and practice.” He urged parishioners to mail letters to Hill and other legislators.

Oakland Diocese Bishop Michael Barber was even more direct.

More here-

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Bill-requiring-priests-to-report-child-abuse-14083573.php

People afraid of confessing to priests

From Trinidad-

AN Anglican minister has lamented the lack of interest in confessions among the church's faithful.

Canon Ronald Branche said while confessions are a vital component of the Lenten experience, many people continue to shy away from it for fear of confessing their sins to a priest, whom they perceive as an ordinary man.

"Some people say, 'I eh confessing to no man,' but the priest is not there to judge you," Branche said on Sunday.

He was addressing the Anglican Church's Gathering of Pilgrims 2019 at Signal Hill Secondary School, Tobago.

The event, which had as one of its themes, True Worship: The Essence of Reconciliation: A Realignment of Self, brought together Anglicans from parishes throughout TT.

More here-

https://newsday.co.tt/2019/03/24/people-afraid-of-confessing-to-priests/

Australian bishop: Seal of confession cannot be ended by ‘law of politicians’

From Australia-

Politicians can change the law, but priests won’t violate the confessional, said the administrator of the Archdiocese of Adelaide.

A new law says religious ministers in the state of South Australia will have to report anyone who admits to child abuse, even if it’s in the confessional.

Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson in May became the most senior Catholic cleric in the world to be convicted of covering up child sex abuse in the 1970s. He could face two years in prison.

Adelaide is the capital of the state of South Australia.

Bishop Gregory O’Kelly, an Adelaide native, was appointed by Francis as apostolic administrator for the Adelaide archdioceseafter Wilson’s trial.

More here-

https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2018/06/15/australian-bishop-seal-of-confession-cannot-be-ended-by-law-of-politicians/ 

Our confessional guidance is not uncanonical, Canterbury diocese says

From The Church Times-

CANTERBURY diocese has defended itself against the charge that guidance on its website advises priests to betray the seal of the confessional.

The Principal of St Stephen’s House, Oxford, Canon Robin Ward, this week called the advice “uncanonical”, and said that it placed the clergy in an “invidious and unsatisfactory position”.

The diocese’s child- and adult-protection guidelines, drafted and posted online in early 2015, state: “The Bishop emphasises that . . . any priest hearing a confession, regularly or otherwise, must say prior to hearing that confession the following statement of confidentiality and safeguarding: ‘If you touch on any matter in your confession that raises a concern about the well-being or safeguarding of another person or yourself, I am duty bound to pass that information on to the relevant agencies, which means that I am unable to keep such information confidential.’”

Prior to this, the guidelines cite the House of Bishops policy for safeguarding children (Protecting All God’s Children, 2010), which state: “Canon Law constrains a priest from disclosing details of any crime or offence which is revealed in the course of formal confession; however, there is some doubt as to whether this absolute privilege is consistent with the civil law. Where a penitent’s own behaviour is at issue, the priest should not only urge the person to report it to the police or the local authority children’s social care, if that is appropriate, but may judge it necessary to withhold absolution. In such a case the priest may consider it necessary to alert the bishop to his or her decision in order to safeguard himself or herself and seek advice on the issues, though the penitent’s details would not be shared without their permission. The priest might also judge it appropriate to encourage the penitent to speak personally to the bishop.”

More here

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/1-june/news/uk/our-confessional-guidance-is-not-uncanonical-canterbury-diocese-says

What is to become of the Confession?

From The Living Church-

As the possibility of prayer book revision is bandied about, one aspect of our liturgy deserves significantly more attention: the General Confession. If it suffers pruning similar to that of the 1928 and 1979 editions of the prayer book, then it might disappear altogether.

The form of the General Confession that was used in the 1928 prayer book, and that is more or less preserved in the extended Rite I options of the 1979 book, remained remarkably similar to the earliest English prayer books. It moved out of the eucharistic prayer, but the words remained mostly unchanged. In the now-ubiquitous Rite II liturgy, however, the General Confession has been bowdlerized, and this has harmed our theology of sin and grace. The historic confession’s language (“We do earnestly repent and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; the remembrance of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable”) has become “We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.”

More here-

https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2018/01/08/what-is-to-become-of-the-confession/

Lessons from the confessional on dealing with ‘cutting’

From Crux Now-

“I cut myself.”

It’s a bald statement, which I repeatedly hear in confessions of high school youth, one offered along with more mundane sins, such as disobeying one’s parents or stealing a jacket at school.  Sometimes it’s followed by a specification.  The young person behind the screen will add, “On my stomach.”

In one face-to-face confession, the young man showed me his arms.

In three decades of hearing confessions, I’d developed the attitude of Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes: “There is nothing new under the sun.”  But after twenty years of primarily scholastic ministry, I have returned to parochial ministry.  Hearing so many confessions about “cutting” is new for me.

More here-

https://cruxnow.com/commentary/2016/11/13/lessons-confessional-dealing-cutting/

Breaching seal of confession won’t stop abuse, says Forward in Faith

From The Church Times-

ANY attempt to allow priests to breach the confidentiality of sacramental confession would be wrong, and could lead to priests’ being imprisoned, the traditional Catholic organisation Forward in Faith (FiF) has warned.

FiF’s formal submission to a Church of England working party on the seal of the confessional urges the House of Bishops, the Archbishops’ Council, and the General Synod not to remove the ban on revealing what has been said in confession.

In the sacrament of reconciliation, or penance, a priest is obliged never to disclose what is confessed by a penitent. Canon 113 of the Code of 1603 expresses this, but, the FiF submission says: “The obligation was not created by Canon 113 . . . The Seal is intrinsic to the sacrament.”
More here-

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/30-october/news/uk/breaching-seal-of-confession-won-t-stop-abuse-says-forward-in-faith

Top Anglican calls for breaking confidentiality in confessions involving child abuse

From RNS-

Anglican priests should no longer be bound by the centuries-old principle of confidentiality in confessions when they are told of sexual crimes committed against children, the Church of England’s No. 2 official said.

Speaking at the end of an internal inquiry on whether senior church officials ignored abuse allegations involving children, Archbishop of York John Sentamu said that “what happened was shameful, terrible, bad, bad, bad.”

He said that the Church of England must break the confidentiality of confession in cases where people disclosed the abuse of children. “If someone tells you a child has been abused, the confession doesn’t seem to me a cloak for hiding that business. How can you hear a confession about somebody abusing a child and the matter must be sealed up and you mustn’t talk about it?”

Read more at

http://national.deseretnews.com/article/2606/Top-Anglican-calls-for-breaking-confidentiality-in-confessions-involving-child-abuse.html#SK5c0cA7wQk3f8d8.99

The Seal Cannot Be Broken: Priestly Identity and the Sacrament of Confession

From ABC Australia-

The Anglican Communion has demonstrated, yet again, how eager it is to keep up with changing times. In line with society's greater recognition of the devastation wrought by child sexual abuse, a recent Synod has sought to remove any impediment to good professional practice and individual conscience by allowing individual priests to report on serious crimes they may have learnt about through confession.

It has not taken long for commentators to wonder if the much slower moving Catholic Church will eventually follow suit. Thus, while Alison Cotes congratulates the Anglican Church in Australia for giving short shrift to the inviolability of confession, she also wonders if "in the fullness of time, the Roman Catholic Church will also see that what was good theology in 1215 may not be so useful, or even moral, 800 years later."

More here-

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/08/27/4075554.htm

Why I agitated for confessions to no longer be bound by confidentiality

From Australia-

While a court in the US has ordered a priest to reveal what a young girl told him in the confessional amid fears she may have told him she was being abused by a parishioner – which his diocese has stated he will not do – an Australian Anglican explains why he lobbied for his Church to make exceptions

Anglican clergy in Australia are no longer compelled to keep confessions of serious crimes confidential, following a decision made by the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia last week.

Since 1989 clergy have been required by canon law to keep confessions confidential, except where the penitent consented to its disclosure. It is most commonly it is clergy in the Catholic tradition who hear private confessions.


More here-

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/blogs/1/403/why-i-agitated-for-confessions-to-no-longer-be-bound-by-confidentiality

Anglican priests to have option of disclosing confessions on serious crimes

From Australia-

The Anglican Church has decided to give priests in Australia the option of breaking the confidentiality of confessions.

The general synod, meeting in Adelaide, has voted for the historic change to cover serious crimes, such as child abuse.

It has decided it will be up to individual dioceses to adopt the policy.

Adelaide's Anglican Archbishop Jeffrey Driver says the change makes sense but there will not be a hard-and-fast rule.

"In matters where lives and genuine wellbeing of people is at risk, the Church has decided that a priest may disclose [but] it's not saying a priest must disclose," he said.
More here-

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-03/anglican-priests-to-have-option-of-disclosing-confessions/5568672

Rethinking Community and the Sacraments

From St. Louis-

Have you ever read something that was so striking that you can literally remember where you were sitting and what was going on around you when you first read it, even after many years have passed? A few years ago, my spiritual director recommended a book called Reconciliation: Preparing for Confession in the Episcopal Church by Martin L. Smith. I remember taking a tea break in the cafeteria one afternoon, book in hand, thinking I could just plow through the reading and finish the assignment.

Then I got to the following passage:

“We cannot under any circumstances baptize ourselves. Someone who is baptized has to baptize me. There is always community involved. Reconciliation with God cannot leave me in my solitude, with my individuality and autonomy unaffected, as if my relationship with him were a purely private affair. God’s act of reconciliation in Christ established a reconciling community of the reconciled—the church.”

The words hit me with such force that I got a little light-headed and I felt tears slip down my cheeks. I remember feeling that I had to sit very still and close my eyes, as if the world might simply fall away around me if I weren’t very careful to hold on tight. I believe I was, to borrow a phrase from my evangelical friends, convicted.

More here-

http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/civil-religion/pamela-dolan/rethinking-community-and-the-sacraments/article_dc075c8a-488f-11e3-9159-001a4bcf6878.html

How my sins struck terror into the heart of a priest

From The Telegraph-

Remember when you were little and did something really bad? Whacked a soaring boundary through your next-door-neighbour’s greenhouse, or borrowed your big sister’s best dress without asking and spilt Ribena down it?

If not, congratulations. Your name is obviously Fotherington-Thomas, the preternaturally saintly schoolboy cherub of Willans and Searle’s immortal Molesworth books, who greets Nigel Molesworth’s cruel classroom taunts with a gentle riposte of: “I forgive you Molesworth for those uncouth words.” Either that or you have no conscience at all, like Mr ------ and various other public figures whom the Telegraph’s libel lawyers unfortunately forbid me to mention.

You know that feeling of a stone resting on your heart, when you are waiting to be found out? Turns out that it is more than the oppression of a fevered imagination. The experiments of Prof Ramona Bobocel, of the University of Waterloo in Canada, and her Princeton colleague, Martin Day, have shown that the mental strain of a guilty conscience translates into a physical sensation of carrying a burden.

More here-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10369532/How-my-sins-struck-terror-into-the-heart-of-a-priest.html

'Catholic' confession is good for the soul - says Archbishop of Canterbury

From The Telegraph-

The Most Rev Justin Welby advised churchgoers that it could be an “enormously powerful” experience to unburden themselves to a confessor, even if it was not always a “bunch of laughs”.

His comments came as he addressed the heads of other churches – including the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England Wales, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols – about divisions between Christians.

Although Archbishop Welby comes from the evangelical wing of Anglicanism, his personal spiritual director is a Swiss Roman Catholic priest, Fr Nicolas Buttet, and he is a strong advocate of Catholic worship styles.

He spoke of being part of a wider “catholic tradition”, adding: “I’ve learnt over the last 10 years about the great sacrament of reconciliation: confession.

“It is enormously powerful and hideously painful when it’s done properly … it’s really horrible when you go to see your confessor – I doubt you wake up in the morning and think, this is going to be a bunch of laughs.

More here-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10368140/Catholic-confession-is-good-for-the-soul-says-Archbishop-of-Canterbury.html