Refusing to talk does not violate the oath a witness takes. It may, of course, subjetc the witness to contempt charges if the judge believes the witness has no right to refuse to give testimony, but it’s not a violation of any oath.
I think that’s the key. Almost anything a person could confess to would have negative consequences towards a third party’s welfare in some way or another; otherwise why would they be confessing it? The priest would have to rush out and share what he’d learned with someone after practically every session.
The problem with your view, aldiboronti is that it’s what you might call a small-picture view.
Let’s say the priest does break down and reveal the secret he’s been told in confessional. The evidence likely can’t be used against the murderer, because of the privilege laws. But let’s say that the mere revelation is enough for the police to start watching the guy, and when he makes a move on another victim, they rush in and the guy’s killed resisting arrest, to save us all those complicated evidentiary problems.
What happens to the NEXT pyscho-killer guy?
He, realizing the seal of the confessional is NOT sacrosant, simply doesn’t use the confessional to confess.
In other words, the reason people rely upon the confessional is that safety – most people for good, supportable reasons, but some for ugly and evil ones. But if you take that safety away under the guide of “no rules should be absolute” you simply eliminate the very situation you’re arguing should be used as evidence that the rule should have exceptions!
Why would the criminal go through with this? What’s he getting out of it? He’s not getting absolution from the priest, so he knows he’s not being forgiven for what he’s doing. Maybe he’s getting some sick satisfaction out of telling someone he did it, but that’s all.
If he expressed sorrow and repentance, the absolution is not conditional on his secular confession. The priest would certainly urge the person to turn himself in, but absolution is a separate thing. The ten Hail Marys aren’t a requirement without which the absolution didn’t stick; they are penance which encourages thought and meditation on trying to do better in the future.
Well, to be honest, you have hit on the exact reason that aldiboronti’s scenario seems so far-fetched to me. There is NO WAY a priest would grant absolution to this criminal, and therefore it seems unlikely that the criminal would keep coming back to confess. I wonder if, by the third “confession”, it’s possible that the priest wouldn’t even consider it a confession anymore. Part of confession is that you have to have the intention not to commit the same sin again. Since the perp in this case is clearly stating to the priest that he does not have this intention, I’m not sure this would in any way be considered a valid attempt to confess.
Kind of the same thing is a criminal seeking sanctuary in a church (or a mosque). Will the secular government violate the holiness of the church (or mosque) and go in and grab the criminal?
Most “storyliines” I’ve read have the cop violating this and the religious townspeople taking their own back on the cop.
Sshs?
If someone comes to a priest and confesses that they’re planning to rape or murder some, would the priest be obligated to tell someone? They’d be protecting the sanctity of human life (RCC seems to have gotten very big on that recently) and prevent the person from commiting a mortal sin.
So, if you confess your sins to a priest, but don’t do what he tells you to do as penance, are you absolved anyway? IANACatholic, but that’s not how I thought it worked.
Is the priest still bound by the sanctity of the confessional if the confession isn’t valid?
What if the person confessing is not even Catholic? If some random person off the street came into a confessional booth or room and told the priest, “hey, I’m not Catholic, but I just committed a horrible crime” can the priest tell the authorities about it?
Or does the sanctity of the confessional apply to anything said to the priest by anyone in a confessional setting?
Well, I’m not completely up on current Catholic theology, but I think if someone fully intends to commit a mortal sin, but is physically prevented from the act, they have still sinned. So the informing wouldn’t really do anything for the murderer’s soul.
And if you’re Christian, then death (even murder) isn’t that big a deal, compared to eternal salvation. So it’s not a very good bargain to prevent a murder, but destroy an institution (Confession) which could bring many people to grace.
I believe this is how a priest is different from a mental health professional, as it was explained to me that for psychiatrists and the like, confessions of past crimes are privileged, but statements of intent to commit future crimes are required to be passed on to appropriate authorities.
I’m a Christian Quercus (none practising.)
For me murder is a big deal, it’s real. Eternal Salvation is something we have no proof of.
So IMHO it is most certainly a good bargain to prevent a murder, moreover the whole business of the confessional being sacrosanct needs to be reviewed.
Wow! I’d have thought a law mentioning a specific religion would be prima face evidence it were unconstituional.
I deliberately took my hypothetical situation to absurd extremes to ask if there were any point at all at which the principle of confessional sanctity breaks down and common sense comes into play.
After all, we’re not talking about the confidentiality between a lawyer and his client here, a confidentiality which ultimately is for the benefit of us all. We’re talking about the beliefs of one particular church.
Confession may be good for the soul, but when the preservation of its privacy involves the sacrifice of other people’s bodies I think we need to draw the line.
But then how would you protect members of religions that require believers to confess their sins to someone, but not necessarily a member of the clergy? (I imagine that’s what the Christian Science practitioner language is there for) If the Sister Fidelma books by Peter Tremayne can be believed (and Peter Tremayne is supposedly a pen name for an expert on Irish history), early Celtic Christians did that, too- they had a “soul friend” to whom they confessed their sins, but that person wasn’t necessarily a priest.
I AM a Catholic, and I thought that is how it worked, too! gigi, don’t you think the case could be made that if you don’t complete the penance, it shows a lack of…well, a lack of penitence? That the confession wasn’t sincere?
I’m not sure where the line could be drawn, if anywhere. If a priest decides, for whatever reason, during a confession, that he cannot give absolution, he is still bound under the seal of the confessional. But, if the person continually comes in, “confesses” the same crime, and tells the priest that he has every intention of committing the crime again, I am not sure if the priest would consider that the confessor himself truly intended to make a confession. This might make a difference, I’m not sure.
If the priest felt that it was a truly penitent person, looking for the forgiveness of God, I doubt that priest would break the seal. Whether or not this would be backed up by the Vatican, I don’t know.
When you speak of “we” needing to draw the line, who do you mean by that? The Church will never, ever bend of this. In fact, a priest breaking the seal of the confessional gets him an automatic excommunication from the Church…this is how serious it is considered. If you are talking about the Government, I suppose we could try to force priests to talk, but there’s really no way to do that, either. You could jail them on contempt charges, but a priest would be expected to spend the rest of his life in jail vs. break the seal.
There is no point where “common sense” comes into play, as you put it…the Church doesn’t work like that. 
The point of the confession is to save souls…there is no purpose on earth that the Church would put above that.
The State does not sanction the consequences of all religious beliefs, nor should it. We (and by that ‘we’ I mean the citizenry as a whole, the majority) do not allow Jehovah’s Witnesses to refuse life-saving medical treatment to their children. Should we allow a Catholic priest to put the needs of a ‘soul’[ above the safety of the community?
Religious freedom does not mean religious licence.
OK, so even given that premise, how do you propose to make the priest “talk,” if he feels he has a moral obligation not to?
Have there been any cases of priests who said “Screw it” and told the authorities anyway? Are they able to be forgiven by the church if they do?