Considering how often I’ve seen the “can’t tell because I heard the murder confession in Confession” twist in low-level “thrillers”, I’d have to think that some yahoo tried it out by telling his priest about his crimes in real life at some point, knowing that the priest couldn’t tell. Are priests allowed to tell police in special circumstances, and has there ever been a legal challenge to prevent that sort of hypothetical thing from happening?
AFAIK, the conversation between someone and their clergyman (not just priests) is privileged. The police cannot compell the clergy to testify to anything said to them.
There may be exceptions, say, if someone confessed to the priest in a social setting outside the church.
In theory, a priest can tell the police what’s told to him in confidence, but that would be a betrayal of his vows and it’s extremely unlikely he’d even consider it, no matter what the crime.
The priest can counsel the person who confesses to take his confession to the police, though.
According to this article in the Catholic Encyclopedia, a fairly modern understanding of the Seal of the Confessional is found in Gratian’s Decretum from the 12th century. As for whether the seal has ever been challenged, the answer is absolutely yes. The rest of the referenced article goes into a good bit of detail of the state of civil law in many countries regarding the Seal as of 1908 (year of publication of the freely available edition).
For a modern example of challenges to the Seal, see this news item from earlier this year, regarding a proposal in the Maryland legislature requiring anyone, including priests, to report suspected child abuse, even if that information was received during confession. In response, Cardinal McCarrick of Washington said:
But couldn’t someone then make a pretty good case that the clergyman was a kind of accessory to a crime if he doesn’t report that Joe Smith said he killed five people and he’s gonna do it again on Sunday at 5:30 p.m. at this location.
Well if you changed the law so that clergy could be compelled to testify like this, it wouldn’t change anything, because then Joe never would have told his priest in the first place. All it would do is deprive the priest of the chance to talk Joe into turning himself in.
Unless you’re talking about tricking people into submitting admissable confessions.
I think if a priest knows of a future crime, the priest would be obligated to go to the appropriate authorities to report it. If the person is asking for absolution for past crimes, then the priest would not be able to spill the beans.
A mental health professional will report a future crime (with certain limitations as long as there is some specifics), but I don’t think a priest would.
In the Catholic Church, if you THINK about doing something wrong, that can be considered a sin. However, you can’t ask for asbolution in advance.
What I believe would happen if someone went into the confessional and told the priest that he was going to go out and kill his wife is to encourage the man to go to the police or to just not go through with it.
But the priest isn’t going to call the police about that. Not if he wants to stay a priest.
Priests are absolutely forbidden to reveal confessions. It doesn’t matter if there is a law that would require it; if Maryland had passed that law, then priests would have been obliged to disregard it.
Diceman: Given Catholicism’s history of martyrs, there are obviously people who consider Church law more important than civil law. I think a fair sampling of clergymen would have gone to prison without ever having told what was confessed to them.
Purely legally speaking —
In most jurisdictions, there is a privilege that exists in a clergy-penitent relationship. This privilege exists at trial, and must be invoked by the privilege-holder to matter. Depending on the jurisdiction, the privilege usually “belongs” to the penitent - which means that he/she has to invoke it.
Practically speaking, this means that the priest (or whomever) can usually get up and start spilling his guts unless the other party objects.
In a few jurisdictions, the priest actually has the obligation to invoke the privilege on behalf of the penitent (like the attorney-client privilege)
This privilege has been expanded in recent years to include not only confession, but also run-of-the-mill religious counseling (and other faiths than Catholic as well). Basically it covers all confidential communications between a lay person and a clergymember for the purpose of spiritual counseling.
*** this privilege does not apply to mail order / internet priests and ministers.
— Peter Wiggen
Have you got a cite for that? I’m pretty sure I remember being taught specifically (in a Catholic school) that thinking about doing wrong was not a sin. I could be wrong, it was a while ago.
Trillionaire, in Catholic moral theology, thoughts can be sins, but are not always. Experiencing a passing temptation is not a sin, entertaining the thought can be. As an example of the Church’s take on sins of thought, in one form of the penitential rite at Mass we say:
I confess to almighty God,
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have sinned through my own fault
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done,
and in what I have failed to do;
and I ask blessed Mary, ever virgin,
all the angels and saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.
“If you say to yourself, ‘I’m gonna go downtown and commit a mortal sin,’ save your cab fare: you already did it!”
–George Carlin
OK so a priest can’t voluntarily divulge confession info, what if he is tricked into it by a clever interrogator? Does he have a problem then?
“If you say to yourself, ‘I’m gonna go downtown and commit a mortal sin,’ save your cab fare: you already did it!”
–George Carlin
OK so a priest can’t voluntarily divulge confession info, what if he is tricked into it by a clever interrogator? Does he have a problem then?
The language in canon law refers to whether the priest directly or indirectly violates the seal. In the case of direct violations, the penalty is automatic excommunication; in the case of indirect violations, an appropriate penalty is to be imposed by the governing authority, usually the local bishop. If a priest accidentally revealed something, I assume that would be considered indirect, but it would be up to the local ordinary to make that distinction. Here are a couple pertinent paragraphs from canon law:
What other religious confessions are protected under the law? If I tell my rabbi about the murder I committed, can he keep it privat? My Wiccan coven High Priestess?
The priest not only can, they must counsel the person.
And more tha just counseling, the priest would assign them a penance to complete. And in the case of a serious crime like murder, that penance would nearly always include “making good” in the civil society by confessing to the victim’s family & the civil authorities.
If a person refused to accept this penance, the priest could (and probably would) refuse the absolution of their sins. And that, technically, would mean that this was not a validly completed sacrement of confession. But I think the priest is still bound by the seal, and can’t go to the police.
(This is based on conversations with a friends’ uncle, who is a retired priest in his 80’s. So it is from what was taught in the Seminary about 60 years ago. But I don’t think this has changed much since then.)
I am currently reading a mystery novel where something like this takes place.
According to this book, a priest is only obliged to confidence if the confession is a genuine one - one where the person wants to seek penance.
If someone were to go to a confessional and ‘brag’ about a murder, then it is not a ‘confession’ per say.
Is there any truth to this?
Well, one basic element in the “Sacrament of Reconciliation” as it’s called today (Yes, PC-speak in the Church; will wonders ever cease) is that just showing up and mouthing the appropriate prayers does not automatically gain absolution. So a Priest can just refuse to pronounce absolution until you turn yourself in, or if he has good reason to suspect your confession is insincere.
Cat Fight, under current law in most States, the privilege extends to any religious pastoral-counseling setting – of course, if the religion itself does not impose upon its ministers this duty, or even openly encourages them to cooperate with the authorities, then it’s up to the accused’s lawyer to put up a fight in the court to have the minister’s testimony suppressed.
(…Although I do have to wonder, say if Joe confesses he has been going to Jack’s home for weekly cocaine-and-kiddie-porn blasts, could the priest anonymously tip the Postal Inspector’s office to keep a closer lookout on packages arriving in Jack’s mail route…)
Huh? You are supposed to be reconciling yourself to God. Its more or les called that and Confession, and either one’s accurate.