Seal of confession must not be broken

THE Catholic Church has quite properly been criticised for the failures in safeguarding children outlined in the Cloyne report.

However, why has there been so little attention paid to the failings of the State highlighted by Judge Murphy?

The Cloyne report says doubts came to light in 2005 about the HSE’s powers to intervene in cases of non-familial abuse yet nothing has been done to sort it out beyond squabbling between the Minister for Children’s Office and the HSE.

The minister wants to enforce mandatory reporting (which the Church already adheres to in its guidelines), but social workers are already overstretched and there is no talk of the HSE’s budget being increased to deal with the extra workload which would result from mandatory reporting.

Even the respected NSPCC in a 2007 report on proposals for mandatory reporting in Northern Ireland appeared rather unenthusiastic about such laws.

In countries where mandatory reporting exists, police and social services are swamped with processing a mountain of reports, often historical and of little substance, robbing them of vital time to deal with children who really are at risk.

Indeed, the day after the Cloyne report came out, a mother was convicted in Galway of horribly abusing her children. Social services knew of the children’s plight from 2002 but didn’t take them into care until 2009.

And this is the same HSE that Cloyne diocese was criticised for not reporting to.

It is clear that the State has to radically improve its child protection services before it can point the finger at the Church without fear of being accused of buck passing and hypocrisy.

The Government’s plan to remove legal privilege from the seal of confession will also do nothing in practice to make children safer.

There is no proof in the Cloyne report that the seal was used to hide information, so why attack the seal?

There is also no way to enforce a law requiring a priest to report on penitents other than by bugging the confessional, thus breaking everyone’s privacy.

If someone alleged they told a priest about child abuse in confession the priest could neither confirm nor deny it, so he would be robbed of his right to a defence. Since Ireland has incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law, legislation ought to comply with Convention rights.

Infringing the confessional seal would violate Article 8 (right to privacy) and Article 9 (freedom of conscience and religion).

The convention only permits an infringement of these rights if it is shown to be proportionate and necessary in order to achieve another legitimate aim (eg public safety).

As Bishop McAreavey and others have pointed out, abusers are unlikely to go to confession and any victim or third party reporting abuse would be asked to repeat their story to a priest outside confession so he would be free to report it.

Therefore, it is hard to see how the Government could prove with hard evidence that breaking the confessional seal would be a necessary and proportionate measure to ensure the safeguarding of children.

While we all want the best possible safeguards to ensure the protection of children, we also need to cherish the fundamental rights of all citizens and not allow this sorry episode to be used as an excuse for the erosion of our civil rights by the Government.

John McKeever (Rev)

42 Abbey St

Armagh

Northern Ireland