Catholic Church to Excommunicate Priests for Following New US State Law

The bill is SB 5375 [1]; it's frustrating that the text of the article does not mention that. The relevant part appears to be narrowly written to cover only privileged communication with clergy. All other privileged communication is excluded from this specific reporting requirement.

The article also doesn't seem to accurately represent what confessions would be covered. The reporting requirement is not just for child abuse, but instead appears to be more broadly for abuse, maltreatment or neglect. Depending on how the law views neglect, that could be quite broad, eg, if one thinks about the occasional claims in parts of the US of things like allowing children to walk places on their own being neglect.

[1]: https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2025-26/Pdf/Bills/Se...

An attorney must break privilege if they suspect their client may commit an additional crime, or if concealing the information would bring financial or bodily harm to another person.

Catholic priest on the other hand may take confession every day from child abuser who works with children and says nothing.

Quick hack: priests are admitted as lawyers, and seminaries add a few classes to count as law schools. The Vatican opens up its own bar exams.

No, only members of the clergy are required to report when the communication was privileged.

It's not gaslighting when religious instututions and especially the US Catholic Church have recently had significant scandals of inaction over child abuse

Piercing confessional secrecy is going too far. But the case that all religious or other organizations that regularly supervise children need to be willing to report and deal with abuse by their staff is very strong.

Yes.

(18) "Member of the clergy" means any regularly licensed, accredited, or ordained minister, priest, rabbi, imam, elder, or similarly situated religious or spiritual leader of any church, religious denomination, religious body, spiritual community, or sect, or person performing official duties that are recognized as the duties of a member of the clergy under the discipline, tenets, doctrine, or custom of the person's church, religious denomination, religious body, spiritual community, or sect, whether acting in an individual capacity or as an employee, agent, or official of any public or private organization or institution.

https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2025-26/Pdf/Bills/Se...

>(a) When any member of the clergy, practitioner, county coroner or medical examiner, law enforcement officer, professiona school personnel, registered or licensed nurse, social service counselor, psychologist, pharmacist, employee of the department of children, youth, and families, licensed or certified child care providers or their employees, employee of the department of social and health services, juvenile probation officer, diversion unit staff, placement and liaison specialist, responsible living skills program staff, HOPE center staff, state family and children's ombuds or any volunteer in the ombuds' office, or host home program has reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect, he or she shall report such incident, or cause a report to be made, to the proper law enforcement agency or to the department as provided

>(b) When any person, in his or her official supervisory capacity with a nonprofit or for-profit organization, has reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect caused by a person over whom he or she regularly exercises supervisory authority, he or she shall report such incident, or cause a report to be made, to the proper law enforcement agency, provided that the person alleged to have caused the abuse or neglect is employed by, contracted by, or volunteers with the organization and coaches, trains, educates, or counsels a child or children or regularly has unsupervised access to a child or children as part of the employment, contract, or voluntary service.

What other religions even have this privilege?

How do you reconcile that with freedom of religion and freedom of conscious?

Like how all mandated reporters work: CPS or law enforcement begin an investigation.

It currently seems to be mostly interesting philosophical discussions about why this is even a thing, rather than having devolved into rote mudslinging along the standard fault lines.

Which means that at least for now it's still worth seeing.

Civil law has generally recognised the confessional seal. For example, priests can’t be compelled to testify on anything they hear in the confessional.

Another example is attorney - client privilege.

Attorneys and priests are expected to do important duties for the good of society and thus have certain privileges.

The statue is vague! It could cover neglect.

Perhaps a mother goes to the confessional. “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. I am deep in debt and couldn’t afford food this week for my kids. So I stole $50 from the cash drawer at my job.”

Now the priest is aware of a possible child neglect situation. What next? Should he consult a lawyer to find out if he needs to report this or not?

Does he report the entire confession? Or just the child neglect part?

Can you elaborate? It has LONG been the practice that confession is absolutely confidential without exception. The idea is that they believe that there should be absolutely no barriers to confession when the eternal fate of the confessor's soul is at stake.

There's also the matter of the slippery slope. E.g. what happens when a government decides that raising LGBTQ kids or attending Pride constitute child sex abuse?

This law does not compel anyone to spy. It does say that priests, like teachers and psychologists, have a duty to report if they have "reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect."

I see arguments on both sides of this but it's not compelling priests to spy. It's removing religious freedom protections from a long-standing precedent.

The Church's side is simple: this is a sacrament and the information heard cannot be used at all by the priest, for anything- whatsoever, without exception.

"Given the delicacy and greatness of this ministry and the respect due to persons, the Church declares that every priest who hears confessions is bound under very severe penalties to keep absolute secrecy regarding the sins that his penitents have confessed to him. He can make no use of knowledge that confession gives him about penitents' lives. This secret, which admits of no exceptions, is called the "sacramental seal," because what the penitent has made known to the priest remains "sealed" by the sacrament." [CCC 1467]

The Catholic Church has long held that a confession is somewhat similar to praying directly to God and that anything heard is to be kept confidential, other than priests discussing amongst themselves in the aggregate. Priests aren’t to take any action based on what they hear in the confessional. In theory, it should be anonymous, but that is largely symbolic these days.

A priest can certainly tell someone at the confessional how to seek absolution and that could include turning themselves in.

It should be kind of obvious that id the state wins here, abusers simply won’t confess in confessionals anymore. Not exactly a big win for the state.

> if it’s handled only within the Church then the only penalty are things like defrocking or banning from the church

To be clear, things said under the "seal of the confessional" cannot be shared by the priest with anyone else _even within the Catholic Church._ This particular situation is not a matter of the church trying to handle matters internally, but more of a recognition that the penitent is confessing their sins to God and the priest is only acting "in persona Cristi" (and thereby is prevented from pursuing other personal or societal objectives based on information revealed).