AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
As I watch the growing protest in the Catholic Church against the call for priests to be required to report child abuse confessions, my mind goes to Islam’s Sharia law. Forgive me, I can’t help it.
The church is fighting, as you have read in this paper, the call by the child abuse royal commission for priests to face criminal charges when they fail to report child sexual abuse that has become known to them in the confessional.
Confession is a cornerstone of Catholic religious practice, a regular event, often weekly, for practising Catholics.
The person confessing to a priest who may be seated behind a partition opens with the words “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned”, discusses those sins with the priest, is given a penance that may be a prayer to recite a certain number of times, and is absolved of those sins.
Catholics believe, or are supposed to believe, that the priest in the confessional is channelling God, that they are talking with God through the priest, although I suspect the godliness of priests has been reduced more than a modicum in the past decade.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.