Washington bishops sue over seal of confession
‘The sacramental seal is inviolable’
The bishops of Washington filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging a new state law that requires priests to violate the seal of confession if they suspect the abuse of minors.
The May 29 lawsuit argues that the new law violates First Amendment religious freedom protections, as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the Washington constitution.
“Confession offers the faithful a confidential space to seek God’s mercy and guidance. This trust is sacred, and any law that jeopardizes it risks discouraging those who recognize the harm they have caused from seeking moral guidance,” said Jean Hill, executive director of the Washington Catholic Conference, in a statement.
The suit argues that the law constitutes religious discrimination, because it demands that priests violate the norms of the Catholic Church to adhere to the reporting requirements, while at the same time explicitly exempting multiple other groups from those requirements.
It accuses the new legislation of “[p]utting clergy to the choice between temporal criminal punishment and eternal damnation, interfering with the internal governance and discipline of the Catholic Church, and targeting religion for the abrogation of all privileges.”
According to the lawsuit, the three Catholic dioceses in Washington have abuse reporting policies which “go beyond what Washington law requires,” with the sole exemption of information learned in the sacrament of confession.”
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Washington Gov. Robert Ferguson signed a law May 2 making clergy members mandated reporters, who are required to report suspected child abuse. The law does not allow for an exemption if knowledge of the suspected abuse arises through the sacrament of confession.
The legislation was approved by a vote of 64-31 in the House and 28-20 in the Senate. It goes into effect in July.
Several earlier attempts to pass similar legislation had failed in the state of Washington, because of concerns over religious freedom regarding the failure to exempt information learned in the confessional.
In the Catholic Church, priests may not divulge anything revealed in the sacrament of confession, for any reason — and if they do so, they suffer the canonical penalty of excommunication, a serious sanction in the Church.
Canon law states that: “The sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore, it is a crime for a confessor in any way to betray a penitent by word or in any other manner or for any reason … A confessor who directly violates the seal of confession incurs an automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See.”
Bishops from Washington’s three dioceses have been united in their opposition to the legislation, emphasizing that priests cannot and will not follow its demands.
Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle said in a statement earlier this month that the bishops of Washington had requested a meeting with Ferguson to discuss their concerns, but that the governor did not respond to their request.
Thursday’s lawsuit was filed on behalf of the bishops of Washington’s three dioceses, as well as several priests in the state, by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the non-profit First Liberty Institute, and the WilmerHale law firm.
The Archdiocese of Seattle and the Dioceses of Yakima and Spokane have all adopted “policies that go further in the protection of children than the current requirements of Washington law on reporting child abuse and neglect,” the lawsuit says.
Those policies include reporting requirements for both clergy and lay employees who have reasonable cause to suspect child abuse or neglect.
“The sole exception to this self-imposed reporting requirement—based on more than 2,000 years of Church doctrine—is information learned by a priest only in the confessional and thus protected by the sacramental confessional seal,” the suit argues.
At the same time, the state has maintained and even expanded exemptions from mandatory reporting requirements for certain non-clergy members, the lawsuit says, including lawyers and spouses.
It points to language in the law which specifies, “Except for members of the clergy, no one shall be required to report under this section when he or she obtains the information solely as a result of a privileged communication.”
“Non-clergy supervisors continue to be afforded exemptions when child abuse and neglect is learned about through attorney-client, spousal, domestic partner, or other privileged communications. That includes non-clergy supervisors within youth sports organizations, youth scouting organizations, and any number of other organizations who regularly come into contact with children,” the lawsuit adds.
Those exemptions make it clear that the new law is targeting religion in an unconstitutional manner, the lawsuit argues.
Many U.S. states include clergy members among mandatory reporters, but nearly all other states exempt information revealed in confession.
In 2016, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that priests could not be forced by law to violate the seal of confession in order to report alleged abuse.
On May 5, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it was launching an investigation into “the apparent conflict between Washington State’s new law with the free exercise of religion under the First Amendment, a cornerstone of the United States Constitution.”
This seems like a case that’ll go all the way to the Supreme Court if they can’t settle it locally.
Praying for the legislators, the priests and the laity in Washington!
Good on these bishops. I hope this goes all the way to the supreme court and we get a definitive constitutional ruling that applies nationwide. Other states have toyed with this idea and though such legislative efforts have failed so far, that could easily change.
Clarity at a national level would also help the administration lean a bit on other so-called "advanced" countries where religious freedom is not upheld.