The Catholic Church and the Federal Government reacted intensely to the new law in the state of Washington, for which priests need to be abused or neglected in law enforcement after learning about crime through confession.
Governor Mike Ferguson signed the controversial bill last week to the law, which made it compulsory for all priests to report child abuse without discounts of information published during comfort. Confessions were previously considered advantageous.
Seattle Archdosis – which was made up of 1 1600 priests and 5 permanent decons as 2021 – said it would expel the priests to obey the law. Meanwhile, just a few days before the Vatican America chose the first Pope in the United States, the judiciary called the law a “anti -Catholic” in a statement announced a policy investigation.
Seattle Archdosis warned in a statement that the reason for the dismissal of a priest who broke the confidence of the confession was to rewrite the already established rules for the Catholic priests.
Archdosis says, “Catholic clergy cannot violate the confession seal – or they will be expelled from the Church.” “All Catholics must know and assure that their confessions are sacred, protected, confidential and protected by the law of the Church.”
Much more affected
The US judiciary says it has launched a civil rights investigation into Washington’s law, focusing on how it was developed and finally passed. It suggested that the law could be disagree with the first amendment, the Assistant Attorney General Hermit. IL Lalon said that the law “claimed that Catholic priests violate their deep beliefs in obeying the law.”
In Washington’s Reporting Act, “Clargy” refers to everyone determined by the religious duties of any religion, but the confession as a practice is singlely published because of its privacy around it.
Ferguson’s office addressed the Federal Investigation in a statement to CBS News.
“We are hoping to protect Washington children from sexual abuse in the face of this ‘investigation’ from the Trump administration,” the statement said.
Washington lawmakers did not try to inform the priests’ child abuse, especially since the beginning of the Catholic Church century, the public count on sexual offenses has been facing. Although most states in the United States already have reporting mandate for misuse for religious leaders, each of these laws includes discounting information led by confession.
California tried to propose a bill in 2019 so that the priests needed to report abuse without that discount, but the church Fighting in the passage And the Legislative Assembly finally holds it.
The law originally suggested the Washington State Senator Noel Frame, which includes Seatol in the jurisdiction. This bill failed due to the failure of this bill after the previous two attempts to pass the bill, the final version was passed during the legislative session this spring.
“Many children have been subjected to torture,” the frame said in a statement after the last bill was passed in the state Senate. “In the Legislature, there is a responsibility to work and finish the abuse cycles that can repeat generations after generations. When kids seek help, we need to make sure they got help. This bill is time for everyone and everyone to pass.”
Confession seal
Thomas Plant, a psychologist and professor who has worked with the Church for decades and wrote extensively about sexual abuse of children among the scholars, said that the removal of a confession could have an adverse effect involuntarily.
Planet told CBS News that the “absolute” privacy was applied to the church confession, in his experience, encouraging people who committed the crime to be clear to a priest who then mentioned to their own psychologists.
He said that several patients were mentioned in his career this way and then he informed the situation as a medical professional to the authorities.
Planet said, “The seal of confession, which is a global thing that has been running for thousands of years, is essentially what you are saying at the bottom of the seal, and it gives people a place to talk about things that can’t talk about other things elsewhere,” Planet said. “This is an advantage. People who are involved in a crime or abuse or anything else, they have a place to talk to 100% privacy in their Catholic Church.”
If this is not guaranteed, the plant said that he suspected that the priests of Washington would stop confessing and instead instruct people to find that service in the churches in the surrounding states.
“And I think this would be a horrible tragedy,” he said.
Confession is a basic principle of Catholicism. It calls for a personal conversation where the Congressants or Lapopols express their wrongs to a priest and as a result, the God is forgiven for the god. Everything that is said during the exchange is kept secret.
Technically, the priests are bound to the seals of privacy after hearing confession through their religious oath, and the Church forbids to share the information they have learned in those sessions with others. The Catholic doctrine has clearly forbidden them to inform the authorities even after a confession of a crime.
Seatol Archdosis says they agree to “protect children and prevent child abuse” and commit to reporting it as long as information is acquired in a setting outside of a confession. It has also alleged that the state of Washington has been accused of constitutional protection for religious establishment and violation of the free practice of religion.
“With this Act, the state of Washington, especially in the Catholic Tradition, is targeting religious behavior by inserting the government in the Tahiya, namely, the highly defined conduct of the reunion sacrifice,” said Archdios. “The priests of the state now need the priests to violate a necessary element of this right,” which is violated in the introduction, “which is suggested,” which violates a necessary material in this right and requires enrollment. “
For the new Washington new law, priests only need to share information from the confession if the person acknowledged to abuse a child.
Last year, the current governor of Washington, Ferguson was still the Attorney General of the state, he was pressured to investigate the Catholic Church leadership in Seatol, Spoken and Yakima to use the charges of sexual abuse of children by the priests to use charity funds in Cover Yak. However, the church faced the challenge of this investigation, refusing to cooperate, arguing that it does not require subpoys for its records.
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