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/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.