Australia’s bishops protest to force priests to reveal confessions

Australia: Australia’s Catholic bishops support “nationally consistent” reporting standards for the abuse of minors, but cannot support new national legal standards that would force priests to report real or suspected child abuse learned under the strict confidence of sacramental confessions, the bishops have said.

“The removal of protections at law would be ineffective, counter-productive and unjust: ineffective because abusers do not seek out confession and certainly would not seek it out if they knew that their offenses would be reported,” Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, said in a statement to Reuters.

“Counter-productive because the rare opportunity a priest may have to counsel abusers to turn themselves in and amend their life would be lost; and unjust because it would establish as a matter of law a situation where a priest would not be able to defend himself against an accusation made against him,” he added.

Attorneys-general in Australia’s federal and state governments have agreed on reporting standards that would require priests to break the sacramental seal or violate Australia’s mandatory abuse reporting rules. Further, priests would not be able to use the defense of privileged communications in the confessional seal to avoid giving evidence against a third party in criminal or civil proceedings.