In many states priests are mandatory reporters.
But they can’t be forced to abandon their religious beliefs by the government by breaking the seal of confession.
In many states priests are mandatory reporters.
But they can’t be forced to abandon their religious beliefs by the government by breaking the seal of confession.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 hours ago
Then they should be prosecuted for it.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Great idea, let’s just disregard the first amendment entirely. And then once we’ve done that, the government would also be free to establish a state religion and force all of us to follow it.
I think we better put that monkeys paw back where we found it.
onslaught545@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
It’s not disregarding it entirely. There are a bunch of things that aren’t protected by freedom of religion, and protecting people who are an immediate threat to others shouldn’t be something that’s protected.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
The seal of confession is protected by the first amendment as it’s a core tenant of the Catholic religion, and the U.S. government doesn’t have the authority to change religious doctrine of a religion that predates the country by millennia. If you were to violate the constitutional rights of these priests, you wouldn’t catch any more child abusers, you’d just be jailing people for their faith.
Also, the seal of confession is not “protecting people”. The church isn’t going to defend a child abuser, nor protect them. There is nothing to stop clergy from reporting child abusers to the authorities. It only protects speech shared during the sacrament of confession. If a priest were to find out that somebody is an abuser in any way other than through confession, they would report it the same as anyone else.