LONDON (ENGLAND)
Church Times
July 4, 2019
By Hattie Williams
If children are to be protected, Parliament “must intervene” in the debate on the future of the seal of confession in the Church of England by changing civil law to introduce mandatory reporting, a former diocesan chancellor, Canon Rupert Bursell QC, has said.
Canon Bursell, who is retired, was giving evidence on Thursday morning to the final public hearing being conducted by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA) on the failures of Anglican Church to protect children from sexual abuse.
He was questioned in detail by the lead counsel to the Anglican investigation, Fiona Scolding QC, on the history of church doctrine surrounding the seal of confession since the Reformation, and the ongoing argument on whether the law should be amended to require all disclosures of abuse — by perpetrator or victim — are immediately reported to the statutory authorities. This is a subject on which he has expressed views to the inquiry before (News, 16 March 2018).
“I do believe that there should be a mandate that anything that leads to knowledge or reasonable suspicion of abuse, particularly child sexual abuse, should be outside the seal of the confessional,” Canon Bursell said.
Because of the doctrinal history of the seal, however, an amendment to the relevant canon, as the Anglican Church of Australia had done, while possible, would be “too complicated” and take “far too long” to address the urgency of child protection, he said. It had taken the General Synod “20 or 30 years” to ordain women to the priesthood and episcopate.
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