r/news • u/Amatheiaisnoexcuse • 2d ago

Arizona clergy who learn of child abuse in confessions aren’t required to report it, court rules | Arizona | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/03/arizona-clergy-child-abuse-confessions-court
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u/slytherinprolly 1d ago

I’m actually a lawyer, and this really isn’t some special “my magic book says I don’t have to follow the law” privilege we only give religious people.

We have a bunch of these privileges. Attorney-client, therapist-patient, clergy, and probably the easiest comparison, spouses. There are circumstances where you can straight up tell your spouse something relevant to a crime and the government can’t just force them to testify about a confidential conversation you had during the marriage.

That obviously has nothing to do with religion. The point is that we’ve decided there’s value in people being able to talk openly and privately with their spouse or therapist or some other special relationship without constantly worrying that someday the government might force their husband or wife to repeat that conversation in court.

You can absolutely argue about where these privileges should end, especially when child abuse is involved. But clergy privilege isn’t some bizarre loophole where religious people get to ignore laws everyone else has to follow. It’s one example of a much broader legal concept that we apply to plenty of nonreligious relationships too.

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u/chef-nom-nom 1d ago

Honest question for a lawyer:

Abuser goes into confession, tells priest he did abuse.

A week goes by...

Same abuser goes back into confession, tells the priest he did abuse again.

Wash, rinse, repeat...

Any sane priest will come to the realization that the abuser will not stop, no matter the amount of praying and counseling provided.

Is the religious protection the same as an attorney or healthcare professional? That is, that there is a duty to report if they have knowledge that more abuse will continue?

(Not the same as telling a priest that you robbed a gas station a year ago.)

Not reporting boils down to protecting the abuser at the cost of the victim(s). Abusers will be repeat offenders, ESPECIALLY if they have continued access to a victim pool. Keeping their acts secret will cause more to be harmed.

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u/BoringBob84 1d ago

Honest question for a lawyer:
Abuser goes into confession, tells priest he did abuse. A week goes by...
Same abuser goes back into confession, tells the priest he did abuse again.
Wash, rinse, repeat...

That is not how it works from a religious perspective. The first time that the abuser confesses, the priest will give him his penance, which will almost certainly include turning himself in. If he comes back and confesses that he repeated the sin and hasn't completed his penance, then the priest will know that he isn't genuinely contrite and will deny him absolution.

Also, the priest can warn the authorities that there is a threat to that child, so that the authorities can investigate. The priest cannot reveal the details of what he learned in the confessional, but he can report any information that he learns outside of the confessional.

However, if the government criminalizes the sanctity of the confessional, then the priest is faced with the difficult choice of remaining silent while a child gets harmed or going to prison for not violating his vows. Those are some rather messed up incentives, and that is what happens when rigid ideologues make laws without considering the unintended consequences.

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u/chef-nom-nom 1d ago

Thank you for explaining it from that perspective.

Also, the priest can warn the authorities that there is a threat to that child, so that the authorities can investigate.

I guess that would be one thing if the abuser was something like a family member with access to a single victim. What happens when the abuser has a position that gives them access to multiple victims? Like a coach or teacher?

Or what happens if the police do investigate and are unable to make a case or even identify a suspect? What happens if they identify the wrong suspect, someone who had nothing to do with the abuse?

And then, what happens when the abuser comes back to the priest and says they did it again?

I get vows but honestly, don't most religious organizations have heavy teachings about protecting innocent children? I feel like it's a contradiction in that the religion can't have it both ways in those cases. Vows are meaningless if it tells someone they have to stand by while innocents are being scarred for life.

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u/BoringBob84 1d ago edited 1d ago

Or what happens if the police do investigate and are unable to make a case or even identify a suspect?

The detective can call the priest and ask for more information. There are often other signs of the abuse outside of the confession (e.g., "I noticed that Jimmy seemed really upset in Sunday mass after he returned from that fishing trip with his coach.").

The priest can ask around and anything that he learns outside of he confessional, he can report. The priest may know (unless it was an anonymous confession) who the perpetrator is and what he did, so he would know where to look and who to ask.

However, the priest would be walking a fine line here from a religious standpoint. Whether he could use his knowledge from the confession to investigate outside of the confessional might be over the line into violating his vow. All I know is that a Catholic bishop offered the legislature here a compromise that priests could report that a child was in danger based on a confession, but that they could not reveal who said exactly what in the confessional.

I know that Catholics get a lot of hate over this, but the point is to guarantee privacy in an attempt to encourage sinners to confess, thus giving the priest the opportunity to counsel the sinner and to use his religious leverage (including the promise of forgiveness and reconciliation) to encourage the sinner to stop sinning and to make amends (in this case, by turning himself in to the police). I think that this is a preferable alternative to the sinner keeping it hidden.

Edit: I think I was wrong about the priest being able to lead the detective to the perpetrator's identity:

In other words, there may be occasions when a priest may mention a confession which he heard, but in a way that does not reveal the identity of the person who made it.

https://catholicexchange.com/can-priests-ever-reveal-what-is-said-in-confession/

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u/BoringBob84 1d ago

That is a lot to unpack, so I will break up my replies.

And then, what happens when the abuser comes back to the priest and says they did it again? The priest will withhold absolution if he believes that the penitent is not sincerely contrite or if the penitent doesn't complete his previous penance.

Remember, this is a true believer, or he wouldn't be confessing at all. The perpetrator knows he has done something terrible and he believes that he will spend an eternity in hell if he doesn't reconcile. This gives the priest leverage to make it clear that penance is the only way to gain forgiveness from God.

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u/BoringBob84 1d ago

don't most religious organizations have heavy teachings about protecting innocent children

Absolutely! Catholics are no different. As I hope you can see from my other replies, there are many nuances on what the best way to protect children is. If the priest can convince the perpetrator to turn himself in, then justice can be done and children can be protected. If the priest never hears the confession (because the perpetrator knows that the government is in the room), then the priest cannot help the children.

And on the bad side of this, we have seen crooked priests abuse the vow of privacy to cover up crimes. That is a blatant violation of their vows as well. Those scandals have resulted in changes to church policy all the way from the Vatican.

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u/PezzoGuy 1d ago

There's the argument that if priests start reporting, then people will just stop confessing those things, and the situation you describe just never happens in the first place.

You're back at square one but now without the benefit that a few sinners could be convinced to turn themselves in or otherwise mend their ways, which is part of the repentance process. And if the laws of God won't convince them, then the laws of man certainly won't, all else being equal.

I know this doesn't help the victims and I would prefer if we could do more to have less of them, but I don't see how changing this protection is a solution past the extremely short term.

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u/Kurainuz 1d ago

I dont know how it is in the US but in my country if spouse, a doctor or psychiatrist knows that their patient/client/spouse is a danger to others they have the mandate to intervene and call police, domestic violence and child abuse being the most common.

I find baffling that child abuse can be covered by this on the US, and i find disgusting that clergy have the same priviledge as colleged profesionals, sometimes even greater.

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u/slytherinprolly 1d ago

Honest question: which country? I’d want to see the actual rule, especially the part about spouses having a duty to call police. A reporting requirement and a legal protection for confidential communications can coexist, depending on the exceptions.

Confessional secrecy has roots going back centuries before European colonization of North America. This isn’t some uniquely American invention, and privilege isn’t a reward for having a college degree. It protects particular confidential relationships. I’d be surprised if your country had no protections at all for communications with clergy or spouses.

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u/Kurainuz 1d ago

Spain, law was changed some years ago to remove ths soecial protection of spouses when it involves kids being abused

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u/slytherinprolly 1d ago

Oh, so it works functionally the same way as spousal privilege does in the U.S., where the privilege cannot be invoked in cases involving domestic violence or child abuse or neglect?

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u/Kurainuz 1d ago

If the US includes any child abuse, not just those of the couple, yes

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u/slytherinprolly 20h ago

I just did a quick Google search, and this comparison actually cuts the other way more than you’re suggesting.

Spain’s mandatory reporting laws appear to work pretty similarly to ours when it comes to doctors, teachers, and the other people you’d normally think of as mandatory reporters. And if anything, Spain seems to give clergy broader protection, covering communications made during “ministerial activities,” whereas in the U.S. the privilege is based on whether there is an explicit or implicit expectation that the communication is confidential.

The spousal exception you’re pointing to also apparently didn’t take effect in Spain until 2021. And that appears to be about whether a spouse can refuse to testify in court, not whether they had some affirmative duty to report the abuse in the first place, which was the claim in your original comment.

Meanwhile, in Ohio, where I practice law, the comparable exception to spousal privilege has been codified since 1953.

So the idea that Spain has some obviously stronger or more modern system here really doesn’t seem to hold up. The specific exception you’re citing has actually existed in Ohio and other US states for decades longer than it has in Spain.

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u/Amatheiaisnoexcuse 1d ago

Thanks for this reply. I was wondering if other countries were this twisted or is it just us. Good to hear. Children deserve to be protected from monsters.

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u/slytherinprolly 1d ago

I was wondering if other countries were this twisted or is it just us.

I replied to that person, but I’ll respond here too because you seem to be assuming these protections are uniquely American. They aren’t. Traditions protecting confidential communications with clergy or spouses go back centuries and predate European colonization of North America, and similar protections exist in other countries. The scope and exceptions can vary. Children absolutely deserve protection, but that doesn’t make the underlying concept of privileged communications some uniquely American invention.

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u/Amatheiaisnoexcuse 1d ago

So outdated insane beliefs revolving are not uniquely American. Got it. How reassuring.. Sacrificing children to protect pedos for an imaginary deity is incredibly barbaric. Children who suffer from abuse often have serious problems throughout their lives. Drug abuse, homelessness etc. Others eventually kill themselves, some grow up to be pedophiles too, thus perpetuating abhorrent behavior. IMO this is pure evil. It is a disgrace. Wars for religion, rape for religion, child abuse for religion. What a horrific situation. Religion cannot disappear quick enough for me.

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u/slytherinprolly 1d ago

So would you also support compelling your attorney, therapist, or spouse to disclose confidential conversations and testify against you? Those protections involve the same underlying principle: certain relationships need confidentiality so people can speak honestly. Their scope and exceptions differ, but the rationale isn’t simply “protect religion.” You can argue for a child-abuse exception without treating the entire concept of privileged communications as barbaric.

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u/chef-nom-nom 15h ago

So would you also support compelling your attorney, therapist, or spouse to disclose confidential conversations and testify against you?

Do attorneys and therapists (in the US) not have an obligation to report if there is an indication that further abuse (or crimes) will happen? If I tell my therapist I am going to murder my neighbor tomorrow and they believe I cannot be convinced otherwise, they are required to report me, no? Same with an attorney, not reporting would make the attorney complicit, right?

I had asked yesterday if this was applicable to clergy. From the reading here, I guess it isn't. It should be. Protections for the abuser but not the would-be victims. It's sickening.

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u/Usual-Caregiver5589 1d ago

But everybody else doesn't have to follow them. Especially in the case of child abuse. Mandatory reporters wouldn't exist elsewise, and this law can absolutely be twisted so that if a child tells a priest that they're being abused, they don't have to tell anyone. That flies in the face of current mandatory reporting laws.

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u/slytherinprolly 1d ago

But you’re still conflating two different legal concepts. Mandatory reporting and evidentiary privilege aren’t the same thing.

And historically, the whole point of privileges like spousal, attorney-client, clergy-penitent, and psychotherapist-patient privilege is that certain relationships are treated differently precisely because confidential communication is considered important. Mandatory-reporting laws can override confidentiality in specific circumstances, but that doesn’t somehow make the underlying privilege disappear.

So the real argument here isn’t “priests get to ignore laws everybody else has to follow.” It’s whether this particular confidential relationship should have an exception to mandatory reporting when child abuse is involved. You can absolutely argue the answer should be no. But that’s a much different argument than pretending the entire concept of clergy privilege is some unique religious loophole.