So does this law apply to other confidentiality protections like attorney client privilege, or just the confessional seal? If you confess to a lawyer, does the lawyer have to report you?
The State of Washington is leading an effort to require this for any crime admission by first specifying child abuse to rally the troops. There is nothing surprising that a 2,000 year old institution isn't willing to change their sacred traditions over a state law-- even when gaslit using specific actions such as child abuse.
Yeah I think the State misses the point here if people are confessing for Child Abuse currently because they won't be jailed that simply won't do that if they can be jailed. The whole point of confession of things like this is not to just say you have a get a out of free jail card but to push people to actually repent wholely.<p>Its certainly a religious morals argument but I think its also a strong argument that being able to admit something to priest can be a first step toward pushing people to turn themselves in. Granted I don't know the statistics on how often that this happens this way I think if there was no ability to talk about it people would just not talk about it and couldn't be convinced or pushed morally by another human being to tell the authorities.
Does this cover all religions and denominations? It's not clear from the article which doesn't name the bill or provide a link to the full text.
Ex-Catholic here. The issue in the discussion so far seems to be the priority of the confession ritual vs childrens' rights. In that regard, Catholicism has a doctrinal commitment to parent worship, both in the "honour thy father and mother" commandment and the "main story" being the blameless son's sacrifice at the behest of the infallible father so he can carry out his plans. Indeed, priests are called "father" as well. Childrens' rights are simply not prioritized. As a concrete example, my "devout Catholic" grandfather abused his "devout Catholic" daughter who in turn abused me. I think in some cases they didn't even see this behaviour as wrong, but if they confessed it, they would have gotten absolution of their soul from their confidant "father" because hurting your kid isn't considered a mortal sin. It's long past due to abolish these superstition-based carvouts on childrens' rights, whether it be this case or other issues such as infant circumcision. If someone is feeling guilty about hitting their kids, they don't need comfort, forgiveness, and understanding -- they need a terrestrial authority to correct their behaviour and protect the kids.
The fact that priests protect the pedocriminals is to me a proof of their cowardness: they prefer to sacrify the life of children <i>today</i> to protect their own <i>in the afterlife</i>.<p>I hope that when they meet their creator he will show them the way to hell. If he rewards them for their practices, well, they will be in good company.<p>Heads up to this US state. I am ashamed that my country, allegedly supporting freedom and equality (France) never had the balls to do that.
Considering all other recent posts here that have been flagged, some even distantly related to tech items, I wonder why this was not flagged.<p>It has nothing to do with tech.
The fact that there isn't a carve-out for confessions under seal of the confessional is weird since they get one for everything else.<p>If you try to deputize priests for literally God's sake you destroy the point of the sacrament. Which would be fine in the abstract if there wasn't a long-standing precedent for respecting it. Washington trying to break E2EE with God lol.
So the church gets rid of people who report child abuse, but not people who commit it. That's a pretty clear statement on where they stand on their version of "god's rules" versus any actual benefit to people or society.
What is child abuse in this context? I assume is "child sexual abuse"? Or, does sending them to work on a factory also count?<p>In any case, we should be wary of, as a society, condoning any kind of witch hunt. In this case for example, on first read it seems that the overreach is somehow for the specific case of "child abuse", meaning that anything else, including murder, should be okay to confess, no?
Somewhere in a ex-communist country in Eastern Europe, the corpse of the secret police starts showing signs of life, animated by the sheer amount of irony coursing through its decayed body.<p>I never knew I would see the day the West would pass the same authoritarian laws used behind the iron curtain to spy on their own population. To be fair to the West, at least it's packaged neatly in a 'for the children' package; the communist totalitarian regimes didn't bother with explanations or 'reasons'.<p>In case it's not clear: priests were compelled to spy and report on the population by the secret police.
I am trying to understand the Catholic Church’s side here. At first blush, this sounds bad because the only real accountability is done via civil authorities because if it’s handled only within the Church then the only penalty are things like defrocking or banning from the church. But the Church isn’t a legal authority.<p>I also know that the Church is supposed to encourage the reporter to self report to civil authorities and seek help.<p>The church also lack the ability to prevent abusers from harming vulnerable people.<p>At the same time I understand their position on clergy-parishioner privilege.