Also important in terms of confidential relationships is physician-patient confidentiality laws.
One of the important aspects of this is that one can be honest and open with their doctor and get appropriate, professional treatment, rather than having to withhold information, distort, or conceal information from your doctor so as to prevent him from having to squeal.
For example, say you are having problems with illegal drugs. For the sake of argument, let’s pick heroin. You get a bacterial infection. You go to your doctor, who has no idea that you are a heroin addict. You dance around the truth (or make an outright lie) when he asks you how your overall health is and what your current health habits are, and the doctor, relying on this information, prescribes something that has serious side effects when taken with opiates. You get horribly sick, become disabled, or die.
Also, it lets people confide in their doctor and get help for problems that they have. For example, I believe that a doctor (at least in the US) can treat someone for illegal drug addiction (e.g. prescribing legal substitutes, providing talk therapy, etc.) without worrying about having to turn over the illegal drug user to the police, and we as a society feel that a drug user who is brave enough to admit that they need help and actually asks for it is not someone that we want to turn our back on and throw in jail just because they tried to get help in becoming a law abiding citizen.
Lamer: “Religious confidentiality is vitally important not only to the maintenance of religious organizations but also to their individual members.”
Lost me already. Why is it the government’s job, or my concern, that religious organizations, and their members, are adequately maintained? That’s their own friggin’ problem.
…which brings us back to freedom of religion. It is their own problem; but it is the government’s prima fascie duty not to stop them, for example by coercing information out of priests.
Declining to coerce someone (thus stopping them from doing their job) is not “propping them up”; it is declining to tear them down. Generally, we prefer that our governments act in such a restrained way, do we not?
I’m not setting myself up as a dumping ground for people’s problems. You bet your bippy if someone came up to me and told me they knifed a guy in an alley, I’d be alerting any and all authorities to deal with the situation. The fact that catholicism thinks that it should get to determine what sort of legal ramifications their priests should face is just one of the reasons I gave it up.
How about you not be snarky towards me? My opinion on the law is not a personal attack on you.
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That’s not his opinion. He believes that the law SHOULD treat priests differently than private persons, since he believes priests should be forced to report what they learn, and we know that (in general) private persons are not.
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Who are you talking about here? Since CurtC was specifically responding to me and saying they agreed with me, are you insinuating I said priests should be treated more strictly than an average person? If so that’s sure as hell not what I posted here. So who’s “he” in this context?
I could probably construct an argument where my profession should be deserving of some level of legal confidentiality, at the same level as a doctor at a minimum or a lawyer at best, but it sounds a bit contrived if I say it out loud to myself, so perhaps I won’t bother to type it.
Catholicism is the religious format I’m most familiar with so it’s the one that I comment on the most. If I thought it was worthwhile to familiarize myself with the ins and outs of episcopalianism and then mock it, I would do so. You can assume, for future reference, that I think any religious-based exemptions in legal matters is dumb.
Is encouraging the person in question to publicly confess part of the doctrine of the Catholic priesthood and the various religious personages you’ve mentioned?
Also, just as a question on the law; let’s say that a priest (or equivalent authority in another religious group) hears the confession of someone who has committed a crime. The next day, he’s approached by members of his congregation (again, substitute appropriate word) planning some event in which the confessor, among others, is suggested to have some role to play but which might not be the best of ideas given the confession (so, for example, perhaps a thief being put in charge of the kitty for a donation drive, or a pedophile running a Church (again, appropriate word) day care program. As I understand it, which may well be quite wrong, the priest (blah) is required to not disclose the matter in question. However, if they do not come forward with the information with this indirect question, would they be guilty of actively covering up the confessed crime in legal terms?
No, it’s the need that some citizens have for priests. Full stop. You’ll notice that the Lamer argument in part suggesting (with good reason) that removing priests’ confidentiality would fail to advance the public interest. Remember, you’re going to get either (or both) of two outcomes if you advance this policy: 1) people no longer confess their illegal sins to priests, ergo are no longer being told to stop/repent/confess/etc. by a near moral figure; 2) priests start having to go to prison. These really are not desirable outcomes, even from a secular perspective.
Yes, with respect the Catholics, and I strongly suspect this is true for most if not all others as well.
In fact, it is entirely within Catholic doctrine to withhold absolution unless the person turns himself (or herself) in. The whole point of the Sacrament of Reconciliation is for the penitent to have a sincere recognition and sorrow for his sinful actions; without being willing to publicly accept consequences for those sins, a priest can conclude that the repentence is not sincere and refuse to grant absolution. Since the very purpose of confession is the granting of absolution, this is a powerful tool; a person that didn’t care if absolution was granted would be unlikely to approach confession in the first place.
No.
Your understanding is correct, at least as far as Catholic doctrine goes: a priest is absolutely forbidden from revealing, directly or indirectly, any secrets learned via confession. But even “mandated reporter” laws typically require only that the mandated reporter advise the authorities, not everyone he meets. Failing to let the Picnic Committee know that their treasurer confessed to stealing funds does not count as covering up a crime.
No, you didn’t forget. But as an aggressive athiest, you place zero value in spiritual well-being when it’s religiously based, and thus discount the claim.
Aggressive atheist. That’s a good one. What, do timid atheists put full faith and credit in ‘spiritual well-being’?
But you, as an aggressive Catholic, of course, will not rest until all us heathens accept nonsense like ‘spiritual well-being’ as some sort of valid concept.
On the contrary, I’m resting now. The vast majority of the country DOES accept spiritual well-being as a valid concept. I have no work to do.
Should that start to change, then I’ll rouse myself from my langour.
And I don’t know what timid atheists do, but I contend that reasonable atheists recognize that religious spirituality exists, even though they don’t share it, and do not seek to forcibly stamp it out.
Nonsense. Atheism by definition discounts religious spirituality. Atheists don’t ‘recognize that it exists, but don’t share it.’ They recognize that it’s a delusion that other people buy into whole-hog.
And besides, who’s tryint to forcibly stamp it out? It’s none of my business how people choose to delude themselves. I just feel its necessary to shine the light of reason on it when I’m constantly told how real it is.
You are, by advocating that the solace others can feel in safely disclosing their deepest shame to a religious advisor be eliminated as a matter of law.