AUSTRALIA
ABC News
ANALYSIS
By Noel Debien
Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has just made recommendations that could electrically charge the relationship between church and state.
It has advised that legislators in Australian states and territories should enact laws to specifically overrule the confessional seal. The recommendation would require mandatory reporting to police from priests who hear confessions concerning child abuse.
The recommendations, if enacted, would place the church and the state in direct legal conflict and would require fundamental change within the international Catholic Church.
While priests in other Christians denominations do hear confessions, for many of Australia’s five and a half million Catholics the “seal of confession” is a sacred and secret matter, even when it comes to the heinous crime of child abuse.
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