The Catholic Church has issued a warning to its clergy in Washington state: Any priest who complies with a new law requiring the reporting of child abuse confessions to authorities will be excommunicated.
https://www.newsweek.com/catholic-church-excommunicate-priests-following-new-us-state-law-2069039
Bro it’s breaking Catholic canon. They can change that shit that’s what the Pope is for.
Maybe God would be chill with revealing child abuse even if it comes from confession. Just carve a little exception out there. Crazy that the clergy would rather protect pedophiles than reinterpreting some doctrine.
First off, adapting religion to secular laws is not how that works. There’s the separation of church an state and the state should have no say in any religion. The country was based on religious freedom and escaping what the English kings were trying to do to Christianity in their realms (controlling religion).
But second you shouldn’t take that way since you don’t seem to grasp the role reconciliation has for Catholics and Orthodox (and others). It’s a sacrament (or sacred mystery for Orthodox). That’s dogma and the practice/form is in large part a matter of unchangeable doctrine. That kind of doctrine never gets changed, ever, and never has. It’s an essential part of Catholics’ beliefs. Parts of format are just regular teaching which can get changed, but that’s not a matter of interpretation, it’s a matter of practice (in this case canon law) guided by the foundatinal dogma and unchanging doctrine. The seal of confessing is so fundamental, so sacred that there have been numerous martyrs whose status comes from having been willing to die rather than break it. It’s would be less grave to lie about believing in Christ to save your life than to break the seal (and most martyrs died for refusing to reject their faith when Christianity was prohibited).
Oh, well my bad, I didn’t realize mumbo jumbo God land gets a fucking wave off for protecting pedophiles because it’s been that way for a long time.
The state saying, “hey you can’t hide behind the veil of religion to protect the people doing horrible things to children,” is definitely something to argue in court regarding the first amendment.
I’d argue it’s not a restriction of the practice of religion to compell someone with knowledge of child abuse or similarly heinous crimes to share that with an authority (the state) that can take action to protect people.
Setting all that aside. How is it not just wrong on some fundamental level to have the power to halt but still let abuse and pedophilia occur? It just seems wrong.
Maybe that’s why religious participation has been declining. Because they’re busy telling you that it’s sacred to protect pedophiles.
Quick edit:
Emphasis mine. Ok so you’re saying that there is a possibility that dogma and the practice/form can change and has changed. So… Let’s do that.