{"id":50423,"date":"2017-08-16T16:24:55","date_gmt":"2017-08-16T14:24:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www1.romereports.com\/2017\/08\/16\/can-a-priest-break-the-seal-of-secrecy-in-confession\/"},"modified":"2017-08-16T16:24:55","modified_gmt":"2017-08-16T14:24:55","slug":"can-a-priest-break-the-seal-of-secrecy-in-confession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/2017\/08\/16\/can-a-priest-break-the-seal-of-secrecy-in-confession\/","title":{"rendered":"Can a priest break the seal of the confessional?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Australian four-year Royal Commission who investigates cases of pedophilia in religious groups and other public institutions in the country published 85 <strong>recommendations to reform Australian law<\/strong>. <strong>One proposal is for the law to oblige priests to break the secrecy of confession to reveal pedophiles<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>If legislation were reformed, <strong>Catholic priests would be placed in an impossible position: they would have to choose between committing perjury or automatic excommunication<\/strong>. This is because Canon 983 in the Code of Canon Law ensures that 'the sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason.'<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, as set forth in Canon 1550, in the case of a trial, even at the request of the penitent, the priest is exempt from responding. However, <strong>there is a time when the priest could intervene without violating the secrecy of confession. One example would be to avoid murder<\/strong>. A priest is allowed to warn the police that a person's life is in danger, without specifying how he found out. In some countries, the laws provide waivers to prevent priests from testifying about crimes they found out during confession.<\/p>\n<p>The seal of confession goes beyond mere professional secrecy. From a theological point-of-view, it is considered that the penitent confesses to the priest \u201cin persona Christi,\u201d in the place of Christ. Additionally, <strong>the priest is obliged to immediately forget what was heard once he grants absolution<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Australia wants to force priests to break their secrecy to give authorities information on pedophiles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":28765,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[],"acf":{"video":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/CmJo7DIyJiw","video_descarga":"http:\/\/attuale.romereports.com\/news\/bsegretoconfessionieng.mov","international_url":"http:\/\/attuale.romereports.com\/news\/bsegretoconfessioniint.mov","type":"none","newsletter":"si"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50423"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}