First Amendment under attack as priests face jail or excommunication

When I was auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles some years ago, I spoke up at a meeting of the California hierarchy. We were considering a number of moves being made by the state legislature, including a proposal to require priests to break the seal of confession in matters dealing with child sex abuse. I remember saying, “Brothers, I think we have to draw a line in the sand on this one.”  

And so we did.  In every diocese and archdiocese of the state, the bishops roused their people to oppose this legislation. The good Catholics of California consequently flooded Sacramento with letters and petitions ardently defending Catholic prerogatives – and the legislators backed down.  

It was a victory and an important one. However, similar laws have gone into effect in six other states and most recently the state of Washington legislated along the same lines, requiring priests to violate confidence, even as it exempts healthcare professionals from the same obligation.

Happily, the bishops of Washington have filed suit to prevent the implementation of this law, and they have been joined by the Justice Department itself. I was very pleased to submit, with the help of the Thomas More Society, an amicus curiae letter in support of my brother bishops. As I said years ago in California, we have to draw a line in the sand.

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No one doubts that the motivation behind these legislative moves is a deep and altogether legitimate concern for the safety of children. Catholics share this preoccupation. Indeed, beginning with the implementation of the Dallas accords of 2002, no institution in the world has done more to assure the protection of young people from sexual predation than the Catholic Church.  

Moreover, every bishop, priest, deacon and lay minister is a mandated reporter, meaning that he or she is obligated by law to convey to the civil authorities any claim of the sexual abuse of a minor. Further, all of those leaders are required to follow, on a constant basis, training in regard to this issue. If you doubt my own dedication to eradicating the scourge of clerical sexual misbehavior, take a look at my book “Letter to a Suffering Church.”

The Catholic bishops of Washington state are resisting a new law signed by Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson that they say would violate the seal of confession, which would result in excommunication for any priest who complies. (Chona Kasinger/Bloomberg via Getty Images and iStock)

However, the demand to report cannot be, for Catholics, absolute in the measure that it impinges upon the confidentiality of the confessional. Our belief is that in the sacrament of reconciliation, a penitent opens her heart to Christ himself and receives absolution, which is to say, healing at the level of the soul. 

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What transpires in the privacy of the confessional is, from a spiritual standpoint, a matter of life and death. If there were, therefore, on the part of a prospective penitent, even the slightest suspicion that what he confesses might be shared publicly, he would not seek out this font of grace and the integrity of the sacrament would be utterly compromised. This is why, too, the breaking of the seal results in automatic excommunication of the priest in question. 

And this explains the awful dilemma currently presented to the priests of Washington state: either they break the seal of confession (and hence face excommunication) or they remain faithful to the sacrament (and hence face jail time). God knows that the Church has faced, over the centuries, more brutal persecution on the part of civil authority, but no Catholic priest in America should be subject to this sort of mistreatment.

A nun partakes in the sacrament of confession at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Cathedral in Kottayam in the southern Indian state of Kerala, Nov. 4, 2018. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Permit me to double-down on the properly American dimension of this question. The First Amendment to the Constitution has two very important things to say about religion. 

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The first relevant clause stipulates that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” This means that the sort of arrangement that was obtained in 18th-century England between the government and the Church of England should not obtain in the United States. In other words, there should not be, in our country, any one religion that is specially favored or authorized by Congress.  

But the second relevant clause, less well-known, stipulates that Congress shall make no provision interfering with “the free exercise” of religion. Though no particular church can be institutionally favored, all churches should be free to express themselves in the public forum. Mind you, this goes beyond the mere permission to worship as one sees fit; it includes the exercise of one’s faith in the civic arena.  

A confession sign inside the church at the Mary Queen of the Universe Shrine in Orlando, Florida. (Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

And there is the rub. For all of these laws, which directly target the integrity of the confessional, are egregious violations of the free exercise clause. They militate against both a Catholic priest’s right to hear confessions as is appropriate and against a Catholic penitent’s right to participate in the sacrament without trepidation.  

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So, Catholics should indeed rise up against this law of the state of Washington and those like it in other states, but I would insist that all loyal Americans should do so as well. For the moment, the state is threatening the Catholic Church, but if this is allowed to endure, what will prevent it from coming, in time, after the free exercise of other religions?  

Therefore, I say to my Catholic brothers and sisters, but also to all my fellow Americans, “Don’t sit still, draw a line in the sand, fight back.”

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