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Arizona clergy who learn of child abuse in confessions aren’t required to report it, court rules
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
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It's not very surprising. There's a legal rationale behind it.
Certain classes of people are granted privileged communications.
Lawyers are permitted privileged communications with the people they represent, as those people need to be able to be honest with them about their situation. You cannot compel these communications to be handed over, and I don't believe that there's an obligation to report. The idea is that we donlt want communication to break down with lawyers, because thst causes other social harm.
Similar is also true for certain other relationships, like husband-wife.
Doctor-patient.
And I guess there priest-parisoner; priests often provide a similar counsel-and-advise role.
searches
https://www.encyclopedia.com/law/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/privileged-communication
The key difference is that lawyers and psychologists have a duty to report if they believe the person is likely to commit a future crime, depending on the severity of the crime.
This is protecting a priest from a duty to report even violent crimes that lawyers and doctors would be required to report, simply because some people believe that the priests would be excluded from heaven for reporting.
EDIT: It doesn't even prevent priests from going to heaven, only excommunicates them from the church. They could still repent and go to heaven.
I would ask you to consider: what would you actually gain by forcing priests to report? I think it would only do harm, not good.
If you make priests mandatory reporters, they will start each confession with a disclaimer informing congregants that they are a mandatory reporter. In that case, no molester will confess their crimes to their priest. And at least now, there is some nonzero chance the priest can get the molester to turn themselves in. If the molester is confessing their crimes, they're obviously religious. At least then the priest can tell the molester, "if you do not turn yourself in, you will go to Hell." I don't know how effective that will be, but it results in at least a non-zero number of molesters turning themselves in.
And then you have to consider the harm done to the priest. You're putting someone in a position where the law requires them to do a thing that they literally believe will subject them to eternal damnation. You can lock up a priest for decades until they testify, but all you'll really accomplish is the imprisonment of a nonviolent person who has no intention of ever harming anyone.
At some point this just feels like an exercise in abusing the mentally ill. Imagine if there was a schizophrenic that truly believed that if they testified about a crime they witnessed, that for whatever bizarre reason, they would instantly spontaneously combust. From their perspective, that poor soul would face the impossible choice of either sitting in a prison cell forever or dying a horrible fiery death. I would say it's deeply immoral to put a person like that in that condition. You're basically locking someone up for the crime of being mentally ill.
This is just bleak. That paints most of the world as mentally ill, which in turn exempts them from contributing positively to society as a whole. It’s slapping a plaster on a huge issue with human society and calling it good enough. No! We need to find some way to cure this mass delusion.
I don’t care one iota if you think your fantasy world is real. In the real world, people within your group are devastating real people. If you need to be compelled to face reality, so be it.
And how well has this philosophy of yours worked historically? Your approach leads to wars of religion. Never learned about the 30 Years War in school? It tore Europe apart for decades and killed millions. We have religious freedom for a damn good reason.
Yeah I get it. We’re stuck forever being surrounded by adults who believe fairy stories. I know they get violent when confronted with reality and spoken plainly to. That doesn’t mean I have to like it or play along. Do I get any special religious treatment anywhere in the world? No, because I refuse to play along with the delusion.
Is this the reality we live in? Yes. Does that make it right? Nope.
And children and outcasts continue to suffer forever at the hands of the self-deluded “righteous.”
Sometimes you have to make decisions based not on pure morality, but based on the consequences. I agree that morally, priests shouldn't get an exemption. But as a practical reality, forcing them to will do more harm than good.
I hate that they are not held to a high moral standard and the suffering they impose on others is considered acceptable.
People deserve better than “meh”
A) The priest does not believe it condemns them to eternal damnation. They know they will get excommunicated, but that does not mean they will go to hell. They can repent and be forgiven and go to heaven, just not eat a wafer at church. They can even still go to Catholic mass! They just can't eat the wafer. That's the entirety of their punishment, as long as they repent of their sin. If they are fighting so hard to protect child molesters because they don't want to get kicked out of church, then clearly they would repent being forced to follow the law instead of following their god's law.
B) This is allowing very real torture of a child because an adult has a hypothetical belief. In your analogy of a schizophrenic, you complain about "You’re basically locking someone up for the crime of being mentally ill." Turn that around to be the more correct analogy: You're basically condemning a child to sexual abuse and a lifetime of mental torture because you didn't want to lock up a mentally ill person. Being mentally ill is not a crime. Acting out something that harms another person IS a crime. Yeah, maybe priests don't get sent to prison, but maybe they get sent to a mental health facility where they can talk about why their god cares more about protecting pedophiles instead of innocent children.
C) I don't know if the priest would have to give that disclaimer. That isn't settled law anywhere. Also, in your hypothetical, the confessing person is religious and believes that if they don't confess this sin they will go to hell. So their choice is between going to hell for eternity or telling a priest who will report them to the police, who may or may not be able to get a conviction depending on the evidence. If a person is religious enough to be confessing pedophilia, that person will believe that eternal damnation is worse than 20 years in prison.