Clergy cannot be forced to reveal what they hear during confession, the Arizona Supreme Court recently affirmed.
The unanimous ruling deals specifically with a lawsuit against Church of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon) officials, but the legal principle extends to the Catholic sacrament of confession and other “confidential communication” practices in Protestant churches.
The details of the case are admittedly gruesome. Paul Adams told a Mormon “bishop” he had sexually abused one of his children. He then repeated the admission in a subsequent meeting between the church leader, himself, and Adams’ wife. A subsequent “bishop” then convened a council during which Adams was “excommunicated.”
As previously reported by LifeSiteNews, and detailed in an academic paper, the Mormon leader did attempt to intervene.
The minister then asked Adams to bring his wife to the next confession (which is more like a counseling session in the Church of Latter-day Saints) and had his wife promise to not let her husband live in the house and be near the daughters. His wife evidently lied, and Adams eventually molested two of his daughters.
The abuse went unpunished until the Department of Homeland Security, where Adams worked as a Border Patrol officer, discovered videos of the abuse online. Adams killed himself prior to trial, but his wife pleaded guilty.
Three of Adams’ kids subsequently sued the Church of Latter-Day Saints for not intervening to protect them from the abuse.
But the Arizona Supreme Court affirmed that the church council acted as clergy and were not required to report abuse. It ruled that courts should not determine who counts as clergy, as that would violate the First Amendment.
“We hold that the First Amendment protects the right of a religious institution to define who is a ‘member of the clergy’ and, absent fraud or collusion for secular purposes, prohibits factfinders from inquiring into the religious institution’s designation of clergy,” the court ruled.
Courts, in other words, should not attempt to determine if a religious entity followed its own rules or what those rules are.
While the case dealt with a controversy within the Mormon church, it affirmed constitutional protections for Catholics as well. A failed bill this year included criminal penalties if Catholic priests did not report abuse or potential abuse if they learned about it in the confessional.
The Catholic Church teaches that priests may not violate the seal of confession; doing so is excommunicable offense.
House Bill 2039 would have ordered priests to report any time that they learn of alleged “ongoing abuse” or even the “threat” of abuse in the confessional.
If it had become law, those who failed to abide by the measure would be found guilty of a class 6 felony, which would have carried fines up to $150,000 and two years in prison. However, that is just for a first offense. Priests who continued to violate the law, as required by canon law and the Catholic Church, could face years in prison.
Another court ruling has upheld “clergy-penitent privilege.”
A federal court in the state of Washington struck down a state law last year that would have also violated the rights of priests and penitents. While the ruling is not binding on the country, it does provide ammunition for backers of religious liberty in any other federal lawsuits.
Legal scholar Paul Cassell also previously analyzed the Adams’ case and jurisprudence on clergy-penitent privilege. The University of Utah law professor concluded the laws do not enable abuse, as their detractors will claim. (He also noted anti-Catholic prejudice in arguments against the seal of confession).
Cassell points out that someone who is truly sorry for abusing a child is not likely to go to confession if it will lead him to being turned into the police.
“Common sense, lived experience, and the available empirical evidence all show that perpetrators will not typically voluntarily confess to a mandatory reporter,” Cassell wrote in an academic paper. “Changing the law to conscript clergy listening to confessions into the ranks of mandatory reporters will not serve to bring abuse to light; instead, it will further incentivize concealment.”
The proposal by the professors is “likely unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause and related doctrines,” Cassell wrote in a paper published in June.
From LifeSiteNews
In Nov. of 1997, Fr. John Conley walked into the rectory of his church, St. Catherine of Siena Church in Burlingame, CA, and saw the pastor, Fr. James Aylward, in a darkened room, in the act of wrestling on the floor with an altar boy. Fr. Conley called the police and then-Archbishop Levada. Levada suspended Conley and refused to do anything about Aylward. I was told at the Cathedral that Levada chastised Conley for potentially bringing public shame to the Catholic Church by calling the police. Later, Aylward, an organist and choir director, was to lead a Christmas concert. I wss asked to help along with a friend who also was a singer. Bishop Wester was to sing in a clerics’ choir. I was very upset and told Wester that Aylward should be behind bars, not directing any Christmas concerts in the Church. I said that Levada was wrong in his actions in Aylward’s clerical sex abuse case. Wester did not agree at all with me. I refused to help. Aylward admitted to crimes of clerical sex abuse throughout his career. And Levada, who went on to become DDF Prefect at the Vatican, was found to have covered-up many clergy sex abusers– including former Cathedral pastor Milton Walsh and others. The Catholic Church is untrustworthy. Something needs to be done about this.
Thank you for doing the right thing. I know what you mean. One does not know who to trust any more, not the priests, not the doctors, not the attorneys, not the so-called “Christian” friend who tries to cheat with one’s spouse, not the person at the other end of the phone who calls you who quite might be a scammer. One thing Ronald Reagan was right about is when he said, “Trust but verify.” It is sad that we have to be that way.
I just submitted a comment about a case of clerical sex abuse. The priest in my comment admitted to the sex abuse crime and was convicted– and the Archdiocese paid (not the criminal priest) $750,000 to the poor, sexually abused altar boy. The boy said that this priest, Fr. James Aylward, had both sexually and psychologically abused him for about a year. The priest admitted to a long history of sexually abusing boys since his ordination as a priest. He retired in 2005 and disappeared. He never was sent to jail for all of his confessed crimes– nor laicized. How many criminal clerical sex abusers are receiving retirement checks and benefits from the Church?
Whistleblower Fr. John Conley later brought a defamation lawsuit against the Archdiocese for Levada’s wrongful actions of suspending him from priestly ministry– and won. The Archdiocese finally admitted that Fr. Conley was right in calling the police to report a child sex abuse crime. But Levada did not change his mind at all. He said in a written statement that he still did not believe a priest should call the police to report clerical sex abuse crimes. This is totally dishonest.
Not sure what the best thing is to do. But something needs to be done in our Church, to stop all the evils of criminal clerical sex predators, and prelates who evilly protect them. Cardinal William Levada died in Rome in 2019. How many more prelates are wrongfully covering-up criminal clerical sex predators, refusing to call police— to this very day? And just when will Marko “Rapenik’s’ poor, suffering victims receive Justice?
He was called Darth Levada for a reason