SALT LAKE CITY (UT)
Intermountain Catholic – Diocese of Salt Lake City
February 7, 2020
By Bishop Oscar A. Solis
To be read in all parishes on the weekends of Feb. 8-9 and 15-16. Parishioners are asked to sign the letter that will be presented at the parish, gather signed letters and send them to Bishop’s Office by Feb. 23.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ:
There is a time when Catholics have to stand and speak for truth and our faith conviction. I am writing to you about a bill introduced in the Utah legislature, HB90 Child Abuse Reporting Amendments. I ask all parishioners to help defend our religious rights and speak out our opposition against this bill that would take away the full right to Confession from priests and other leaders of faith denominations, as well as break its sacred seal of confidentiality.
I do not question the good intentions of our legislators of wanting to prevent child sexual abuse and protect innocent and vulnerable children. However, there is no evidence that this legislation will help achieve that. Instead, it threatens a practice that is essential to our faith and religious identity. It is a government encroachment or intrusion into our religious practice.
The Sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation (what we call “Confession”), is an important practice of our Catholic faith. The Bible records its divine origin. It was the first gift that Jesus gave to the world after rising from the dead. On the first Easter night, he breathed his Holy Spirit into his apostles, his first priests, and he granted them the awesome power to forgive sins in his name (John 20:22-23). Jesus gave us this gift so that we could always personally come to him to confess our sins, and seek his forgiveness and the grace to continue on our Christian journey. The Sacrament of Confession is purely religious, and thus protected as one of our first freedoms under the Constitution.
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.