Montana Democrats want to require priests to report confessions of child abuse

If you care about children, this is a straightforward, common sense bill. No wonder religious conservatives oppose it.

This newsletter is free, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can use the button below to subscribe to Substack or use my usual Patreon page!

---

Seven Democratic lawmakers in Montana have filed a bill that would require clergy members to report child abuse to law enforcement authorities if they happen to learn about it through the act of confession.

As it stands, if someone walks into a confessional booth and admits to molesting a child, the priest doesn’t have to do anything with that information. Just say a couple of Hail Marys and be done with it.

Compare that to doctors, social workers, or public school teachers, who are required by law to file a report if they learn about, or suspect, a child being abused.

Why won’t religious leaders agree to report suspected abusers? In the Catholic Church, Vatican officials have long claimed that the “seal of confession” is sacrosanct. Anything said in a confessional booth must be kept secret no matter what. If there’s any potential that the “clergy-penitent privilege” might be broken—and that certain confessions may be used as evidence against the confessor—it could destroy the very nature of the sacrament.

That’s why Montana Democrats, led by State Sen. Mary Ann Dunwell, have introduced SB 139, a bill that would include religious leaders in the list of mandated reporters. If any mandated reporters “know or have reasonable cause to suspect… that a child is abused or neglected by anyone… they shall report the matter…” (More specifically, this bill would eliminate the exemption that currently exists for members of the clergy, which is the only exemption listed in the law.)

State Sen. Mary Ann Dunwell (screenshot via YouTube)

While this would be nearly impossible to enforce, since it’s not like there are hidden microphones in the confessional booth, if there was evidence that someone confessed to abuse and a priest didn’t report it, that priest (like all mandated reporters) could be charged with a misdemeanor, which could result in a multi-year prison sentence.

If you care about children, this is a straightforward, common sense bill. There’s no reason pastors and priests, of all people, should be allowed to keep their knowledge of child abuse secret because of their religious beliefs.

The Catholic Church, of course, doesn’t care about children. Or at least the sacrament of confession is more important to them than the safety of kids. When Delaware considered a similar bill a couple of years ago—it didn’t pass—a Catholic bishop argued against it:

Bishop William Koenig, who oversees the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, told NBC10 his diocese works hard in every way to protect children. He also said the proposed bill was “non-negotiable” however.

“For a priest to break the seal of confession, he would be excommunicated,” Bishop Koenig said. “That could only be lifted by the Pope.”

That’s the sort of selfish statement that deserves to be ridiculed and criticized. In no rational world is getting excommunicated more damning than letting a child continue to suffer sexual abuse. If you would rather protect priests than kids, then your organization is not, in fact, working hard in every way to protect children.

The Catholic League’s William Donohue, a wealthy whiner whose group only ever puts out press releases arguing that Catholics are perpetual victims, just put out a press release arguing that Catholics would be victims if this bill were to pass. (Won’t someone think of the priests?!)

He seriously argues that there’s no evidence of priests having knowledge of abuse via confession, therefore none of this even matters:

It is unwarranted because there is no breaking news on priests abusing this exemption. So what broke? There is not a scintilla of evidence that child abusers are confessing their sins to Catholic priests. Indeed, it strains credulity to argue that a person who is so depraved as to molest a child is likely to tell a priest about his behavior.

If any lawmaker has evidence that this is now a serious problem, we would like to see it. I ask this because the Catholic League has dealt with this alleged problem before in several states, and not one lawmaker has ever been able to provide such evidence; this explains why all of these efforts ultimately fail.

You want evidence of priests hearing confessions from abusers? Okay, here’s your evidence. In Australia, one priest confessed to committing 1,500 acts of molestation (not a typo) to 30 separate priests over the course of 25 years. Because of the sacred seal, though, no one ever reported his crimes, allowing the abuse to continue.

Here’s how one Australian comedian described the tragedy of it all:

It’s not just the Catholic Church, either. In 2010, an Arizona man named Paul Adams confessed to his Mormon Bishop John Herrod that he was molesting his five-year-old daughter. The bishop was told to keep the details to himself… and the abuse continued for years. (Adams’ children eventually sued the Mormon Church, but the case was tossed out because of—you guess it—laws protecting the sanctity of Confession.)

Even if we’re talking about a very limited number of abusers admitting their crimes (perhaps out of guilt) through the act of Confession, though, why should they be let off the hook? And what about children who inadvertently tell a priest they’re victims of abuse because they feel the fault is theirs? Why should priests be allowed to keep any of those admissions secret?

And even if it never happened, as Donohue pretends, then how would this bill even affect the Church? It doesn’t single out Catholics. It makes all adults in a position of authority, who may learn about abuse, mandatory reporters. No one is forcing priests to reveal confessions of other kinds of sin, but confessions involving the ongoing abuse of kids shouldn’t be suppressed just because the Catholic Church has a secrecy fetish.

Not all Catholic priests feel the same, by the way. In 2023, Rev. James E. Connell, a retired priest from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, wrote an opinion piece in the Delaware News Journal calling for that state’s “clergy-penitent privilege” exemption to be repealed.

Unquestionably, secrets have a proper place in our lives. But, if secrets contribute to the abuse or neglect of a minor, that form of secrecy is immoral and detrimental to the common good of the society.

…

As a result, governments should intervene such that, while perhaps frustrating the free exercise of religion for some people, the greater good of protecting children from abuse or neglect would be enhanced for the common good of all people. Our society should protect children, rather than protecting culprits.

That was the sensible reaction. My religious beliefs are important but not at the expense of kids getting abused. (Connell has long been an advocate for victims of sex abuse.)

But in response to that essay, Connell was punished by the Archbishop of Milwaukee, who said Connell would no longer be allowed to hear confessions:

The false assertions of Father James Connell have caused understandable and widespread unrest among the People of God, causing them to question if the privacy of the confessional can now be violated, by him or any other Catholic priest.

I have informed Father James Connell that effective immediately he is to cease all such erroneous communications that distort the teachings of the Church about the confessional seal. I have also immediately removed the canonical faculties of Father Connell to validly celebrate the Sacrament of Confession and to offer absolution, here in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and thereby also in the Catholic Church around the world.

To put that bluntly, Connell was disciplined because he couldn’t be trusted to put abusers over their victims like the Catholic Church required. It was an astonishing admission of the Vatican’s priorities.

You can expect Church leaders in Montana to take a similar approach to protecting rigid dogma over the scourge of child abuse. It’s a horrible look for Catholic leaders to say they have some faith-based right to cover up their knowledge of molestation, possibly allowing it to happen again. The same could be said of Republicans. One state representative is already rallying troops to fight against this bill, claiming it would “dissuade people from seeking forgiveness from God”… which is a hell of a euphemism to protect child abusers.

The chief sponsor of the bill, Sen. Mary Ann Dunwell, told one conservative website that she used to be Catholic herself (but stopped practicing five years ago) and that she had spoken to “various faith communities” about the importance of this bill. She did not respond to my own request for comment.

For now, SB 139 is scheduled to have its first hearing in the Senate Judiciary committee on Tuesday morning. I mentioned that Delaware’s version of this bill failed a couple of years ago. The Associated Press has reported that, since 1987, more than 130 bills have been proposed at the state level to address child sex abuse reporting laws… but not a single one of them has removed the “clergy-penitent privilege” loophole.

If successful, Montana would be the first.

---