The clamour is growing to enable the forthcoming Royal Commission into child sex abuse to require Catholic priests to break the seal of confession if doing so is deemed necessary to investigate abusers and/or the issue of institutional cover ups. The Federal Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, has expressed support for such a power, saying that child abuse is 'a crime' that 'should be reported' under any circumstances.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard also supports the move. 'Adults have got a duty of care towards children,' she has said, 'and it's not good enough for people to engage in sins of omission and not act when a child is at risk.'
The former auxiliary bishop of Sydney, Geoffrey Robinson, a vocal critic of the way the Church has handled clerical sex abuse cases, said he'd break the seal for the 'greater good' and report a confessor to the police if he believed there was an ongoing risk of further offences. At least one Melbourne priest has said he'd do the same.
Before this debate goes much further, it would be wise for everyone to consider what is at stake. Roxon has said that the more important issue is the failure to report to police known cases of abuse and 'open secrets' that came to the attention of priests and Church authorities by means other than the confessional. Similarly, Bishop Robinson has conceded the obvious: 'Offenders in this field, in paedophilia, do not go to confession and confess.'
How much, then, of a practical nature is likely to be gained by trying to force open the seal of confession? More importantly, how much of a religious nature is likely to be damaged? Child abuse is a crime, but so is murder, so is theft. If the seal should not apply to the first, why should it logically apply to the rest?
Sins of omission can be committed, but sins are something other than criminal acts, although they may entail them. Sin is a religious concept — something a believer commits when they deliberately act against the will of God — and as such something that the religious instrument of the confessional is specifically meant to address.
Rushing head-strong into these religious dimensions risks broadening the Royal Commission into a full-blown challenge to the status of the Church (and religious faith) in secular society.
As the practice of private confessions emerged in the fifth century, the seal of confession developed as a