On July 18, a federal court blocked a law passed in Washington state that would have required clergy to report child abuse when shared in the confessional. Washington bishops had filed a lawsuit earlier this summer in Etienne v. Ferguson, claiming the law was “anti-Catholic” and violated religious liberty.
“For centuries, Catholic faithful around the world have sought reconciliation with God through the sacrament of confession,” says Jean Hill, executive director of the Washington State Catholic Conference, in a press release. “This ruling protects that sacred space and ensures that Washingtonians of all religious stripes can live out their beliefs in peace.”
The law was set to take effect on July 27. A coalition of Catholics, ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other faith groups in Washington state helped pass the bill.
The momentum behind the bill started two years ago when ex-Jehovah’s Witness, Marino Hardin, claimed elders had covered up abuse because of the clergy-penitent privilege and worked with Senator Noel Frame on a bill. Soon after, the Catholic Accountability Project (CAP) joined ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses in working on this bill.
CAP focused specifically on the seal of confession, one of the goals being to get the Catholic Church to change its policy around the seal of confession to, similarly with therapists and health care providers, remain confidential except in the case of child abuse.
Even though the law was blocked, its passage in the Senate and its response among Catholics and other faith groups raises pertinent questions about religious liberty, ethics, and human rights. Mary Dispenza, a member of CAP, hopes that conversations about the bill “awaken thoughts and considerations that Catholics did not have before about the seal of confession,” she says, and what faith communities’ roles are in protecting children from abuse.
Changing the seal
Robert Fontana founded Catholic Accountability Project in 2023 along with his wife, Lori, to hold Catholic leadership accountable for cover-ups of child abuse. Fontana used to work for the Diocese of Yakima and “learned the bishop there was protecting priests who were a risk to children,” he says. He became a whistleblower, resigning from his job in the early 2000s. He started working with SNAP and other groups of survivors.
He and others in CAP cite the decades of abuses and cover-ups that were shielded and kept secret because of the seal of confession, such as priests who confessed crimes to one another or, in the case of Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, used the seal to suppress and silence victims.
Fontana is a licensed marriage and family therapist. As a therapist, he is “mandated by law to keep what they tell me confidential, unless a child is at risk of being harmed or has been harmed.” He wanted the law to make clergy members report in a similar way.
Dispenza’s participation in CAP was driven by her “own journey of abuse and compassion,” she says. When she was 7, Dispenza was raped by her parish priest. At 18, she entered a convent to be a nun, and it was there that she realized she had been assaulted. “I shared that in confession with the confessor of the novices and postulants. Life went on, of course. But I realized that was a crime that I did share, and it was never reported. I know that because the priest who molested me”—George Neville Rucker—“went on for four more decades to rape little girls in the diocese of Los Angeles.”
Dispenza has worked with SNAP and led groups for survivors of clergy and nun abuse for years, and a motivation for challenging the seal of confession was “because of the secrecy of my sharing that I was raped by the parish priest” and that abuse continuing. “Had there not been that secrecy around crimes committed and shared in the confessional kept secret, life for many little girls after me could have been very different,” she says.
Dispenza wants the church to “reexamine confession and change it where it needs to be changed,” she says.
The history of confession as a practice has evolved over time in the church. In the very early church, penance was part of baptism, and there was not a separate sacrament. A baptized person was excommunicated if they committed a serious sin after baptism. In 250 C.E., the church declared that once in a person’s life a sinner could confess to a bishop, sit in the back of the church wearing sackcloth, and had to pray and fast for forgiveness. Penance was more of a public matter in this way.
Around 400 C.E., the practice of seeking private spiritual advice on matters of penance began. Over the years the church allowed people to receive penance multiple times in their life. In the early 1200s, Pope Gregory changed “penance” to “confession” and declared it be practiced in private at least once a year, which still continues today.
After losing his job for being a whistleblower, Fontana says he lost friends, and “people got mad at us for trashing the church, for disobeying the bishop,” he says. “I’d do it again. We need more of our lay employees and clergy to stand up to protect children. The real heroes are the survivors because had they not found their voice to file lawsuits, we wouldn’t be here. We’d still be covering up.”
For anyone who has been abused, Dispenza hopes they can get help and find encouragement to report what has happened to them. CAP’s work around passing the bill and trying to get it enacted was a “way to validate [victims’] stories and to shine a positive light on their lives, and how they were harmed,” Dispenza says.
Religious liberty concerns
At a hearing on July 14 about the lawsuit, the court ruled that the state was singling out clergy. Rick Garnett, the director of University of Notre Dame’s Program on Church, State & Society, says the law “narrowly targeted the religious privilege,” and in American law, “to single out religion for discriminatory treatment is really hard legally to justify.”
Clergy are mandated reporters in about half of the states, though most laws carve out exemptions if the information is learned during prayer or a religious rite. In six states: New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas, and West Virginia, clergy who learn of child abuse in a private religious rite, such as confession, are still required to report it.
In terms of the human rights of a child, “everybody agrees that governments have a compelling interest in protecting children from abuse and a compelling interest in making sure that people who commit these kinds of offenses are brought to justice,” Garnett says. At the same time, “our Constitution doesn’t permit governments to single out religious activity or to discriminate against religious activity. If they want to regulate it, they have to regulate it in a neutral way.”
Victims confessing vs. perpetrators confessing
As a confessor, helping victims make a distinction between “sins we commit and sins committed against us” is important especially in situations of abuse, says Father William Orbih, who works at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota.
In 2023, Orbih wrote an article for U.S. Catholic titled “The seal of confession is not an excuse for silencing victims.” He writes about when a victim of abuse confessed the abuse to him in the confessional, and with her permission he helped her take steps to report the abuse.
“I totally agree that the confessional seal is sacrosanct and must never be broken,” Orbih says. “When a victim is talking about a crime that was committed against them, it’s a different thing. My argument is that confessors must be attentive enough to help victims realize that this is not their sin; this is rather what they have suffered. So the sacrament of confession becomes the place where the holistic healing of Christ is experienced.”
If the seal wasn’t there, perpetrators of abuse would stop coming to confession, Orbih says. “I am a staunch defender of the seal of the confessional. Not just from a canonical or religious point of view, but just from a practical and common sense perspective.”
When perpetrators come to confession, “you must tell them that the sacrament is not complete and absolution is not complete until they turn themselves in to law enforcement,” Orbih says. “It’s their responsibility to do that. You are not withholding God’s forgiveness, you are simply saying God’s forgiveness needs further steps to be taken by the person. Forgiveness is already there, but you need to fully embrace it by taking a courageous step of going to the authorities and confessing your crime.”
Orbih believes the sacrament of confession can become a place where perpetrators “gradually experience mercy that makes them unafraid of taking responsibility for the evil they’ve done,” he says.
For victims who come to confession, such as “when someone comes into the confessional and says, ‘I was raped by a close relative, the first thing you need to tell the person is, it’s not your sin. And then by being attentive to the person, encouraging the person, you may be able to get their full approval to take the next step. When you do that, you are not breaking the seal because the seal only comes in when we are talking about a sin,” Orbih says.
There are many other areas in the church where “vigilance of this kind” should be present in protecting children from abuse, such as teachers in schools, for example, being trained to “discern when someone is a victim even without the person saying anything,” he says.
Regarding the Washington law, Orbih believes “the seal is sacrosanct and state law should not mandate priests to do that because they’ll be infringing on their religious right. But I would encourage the state and state law to become even more vigilant in other ways” to protect children from abuse.
Orbih says it’s important to note that if someone comes to talk to him outside confession, “then I am mandated to report that,” he says. “Outside the confessional, there is no confessional seal. If a young person comes to tell me about being abused, I would immediately report it.”
All Catholics bear responsibility to cultivate a safe culture in the church, Orbih says. “We need to keep training and retraining personnel. We need to keep informing parents and guardians and youth. We need to keep explaining boundaries,” he says. “We say safe environment is making sure no one is abused, which is as practical as it can be and crucial. But on the other hand, safe environment is about cultivating the right atmosphere for the grace of God to thrive.”
For that grace and healthy environment to thrive, “we need to get rid of clericalism. Clericalism is a disease that needs to be eradicated,” Orbih says.
Though the church continues to respond in necessary ways to “that terrible moment in our history” when abuse was covered up, Orbih says, “I believe a lot more needs to be done. Let’s keep doing it.”
Image: Unsplash/Steffen Lemmerzahl
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