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 Seal of the Confessional, which dates back to 1215, states categorically that a priest must never reveal what he has heard in the confessional, whether it not such a disclosure would save his own life, refute a false accusation, save the life of another, or avert a public calamity. The punishment for breaking the seal is instant excommunication and, in the 13th century, the priest was incarcerated in a closed monastery for perpetual penance.
So this is serious stuff, accepted by all Roman Catholic and many Anglican priests today.
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