AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

[with video]

Opinion: Anglican Church votes to let priests break seal of the confessional to prevent child abuse but up to dioceses to adopt policy

ALISON COTES THE COURIER-MAIL JULY 09, 2014

IT’S not often a movie audience breaks into spontaneous applause, but I saw it happen in a theatre that was showing the 1994 movie The Priest.

In it, among many other personal issues, the young priest Father Greg Pilkington has to solve an ethical dilemma – should he report to the police the behaviour of a man who has admitted in the confessional that he was sexually abusing his own daughter. He broke the so-called seal of the confessional and the audience wholeheartedly approved – but the Roman Catholic Church did not.

The film raised the issue that is still important today – is the Christian church out of step with modern ethical concerns? The…