Comment and Warning By Priest

Friday, August 29, 2008
States Which Do Not Require Clergy To Report Child Abuse
LOOK at THIS. I did NOT know, some states in The United States of America, allow clergy to get away with NOT reporting child abuse and molestation.

What fucking century are we living in anyway? THIS is why I wanted to change laws protecting churches from the same obligations normal corporations have, and no PRIEST or clergy should have the right to keep knowledge of crime against children PRIVATE.

There is something fucking wrong with a country that permits religious leaders privileges of keeping knowledge of crime against children a secret. Who will protect the children if adults do not? Are these children even able to speak up for themselves?

This is like having knowledge of a child prostitution ring, you or me, and we stumble upon this information, and see children being sexually or otherwise abused, and we don't TELL anyone.

That's called a sin of omission, and beyond that, anyone who has such knowledge and does not report it should also be going to fucking JAIL.


Read on:


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NCSL Home > State & Federal Issues: Issue Areas > Human Services > States Which Require Clergy to Report Child Abuse and States Which Allow Clergy Penitent Privilege Add to MyNCSL
STATES' MANDATORY CHILD ABUSE REPORTING LAWS
States That Require Clergy to Report Child Abuse and States That Allow Clergy Penitent Privilege

February 2004
Nina Williams-Mbengue
The following information is collected from the 2003 Child Abuse and Neglect
State Statute Series Ready Reference Reporting Laws: Clergy as Mandatory Reporters.
The report may be accessed at: http://nccanch.acf.hhs.gov/general/legal/statutes/readyref/mandclergy.pdf.


The Clearinghouse also offers a report on all mandatory reporter categories, by state, at: http://nccanch.acf.hhs.gov/general/legal/statutes/sag/manda.pdf

Clergy as Mandatory Reporters

Approximately 21 states require clergy to report child abuse. The states are: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and West Virginia. Six states specifically require Christian Science practitioners to report child abuse (several are in addition to clergy). The states are: Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada and Vermont.
Clergy Penitent Privilege

Seventeen (17) states recognize the clergy-penitent privilege and allow clergy to maintain the confidentiality of pastoral communications. These states are: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. New Hampshire and West Virginia deny the privilege in cases of suspected child abuse or neglect. Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Maryland, Utah and Wyoming require any person to report, which may include clergy, and they grant the privilege. Louisiana, South Carolina and Washington grant the clergy-penitent privilege although neither clergy nor any persons are mandated reporters. Connecticut and Mississippi require clergy to report, but do not address the privilege in their reporting laws. North Carolina, Rhode Island and Texas require any person to report and deny clergy-penitent privilege in child abuse cases.
All Persons Required to Report

Finally, 18 states, and Puerto, require all persons to report child abuse. These states are: Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming. Of those states, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Maryland, Utah and Wyoming exempt clergy from reporting if they become aware of the abuse during confession or in the capacity of spiritual advisor. North Carolina, Rhode Island and Texas require all persons to report and specifically deny clergy penitent privilege in cases of suspected child abuse. Indiana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Puerto Rico do not address clergy-penitent privilege in their reporting
Posted by Mama at 6:23 AM


2 comments:
Anonymous said...
Priest's are not police. We are charged with saving souls, not lives.

Also, it needs to be understood that Canon Laws, in effect long before most governments, specifically forbid communicating anything said during confessional to anyone, including other clergy members.

Where would it end if we started down that road? Do we also start to report the breaking of all laws with regard to substance abuse? Petty theft?

In a nation that demands a separation of church and state just where could/should that line be crossed?

At one time churches dealt with secular law too. Should we again hold our own courts? Levy taxes? Jail or execute offenders? Return to church raised international armies and wage wars as we see fit?
Compel worship at the point of the sword? Burn and torture heretics?

These, and others, were ancient and sovereign powers of the church. The church retired itself from these pursuits over time but it should be remembered that the church has been, and always will, be sovereign.

Be careful where you open a door.

Father Michael

October 14, 2008 4:56 PM
Mama said...
Fr. Michael,

Point by point--

1. In this country, you are charged with saving lives, not souls. No one in the United States, except fanatics such as yourself, is going to applaud you for standing by with your rosary and the last sacrament, when you should be giving mouth to mouth resusitation. Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan, and also, refresh your memory of the New Testament, which speaks of the wolves in sheeps clothing, who espouse "religion" and do not give a glass of water to the thirsty. Remember how it is said you may be entertaining Christ or the angels, and that whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me. I would venture a guess that if you met Jesus in the flesh, and he came to you with a broken arm, you wouldn't say, "Heal thyself Physician". I suppose his mother Mary, too, should have stood by when he had a cut, because perhaps you would say the suffering was good for him. Let's up the ante. Imagine this, Father. Imagine Jesus is only 7 years old, and he is getting fucked in the ass and tells his Rabbi about it. Your argument is that no one else should know.

If your own religion didn't espouse "practical christianity" you wouldn't have hospitals and homeless shelters. You believe in these things, but not in the protection of the innocent child?

I would say, it is better for you to have a millstone around your neck, in that case.

And guess what? Maybe your whole goal in life is to be a saint or you think it would be great to be a martyr, but you know what? A lot of people do NOT wish for this, besides which, I do not see your Church making saints out of all the innocent little children and teens they sexually abused. I would say the crime against these innocents is worthy of sainthood. But you'd have to "out" them and admit they were actually abused first, by your fathers and brothers and sisters, first, wouldn't you? You tell all your parishioners that they are a part of the Body of Christ, but you must think the people in the parish are just the asshole part. The part, I would say, that gets to deal with all the shit.

You don't get to be "exempt" from reporting child abuse simply because you're religious, and if your church continues with this, I would guess you will have more people leaving.

2. Your argument about Canon Law has no bearing with natural and moral law. Just because your "laws" were around before the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, doesn't make it right. Guess what was before you? Ra, the Sun God, and other forms of religions you call paganism and borrowed from.

3. Where would it be if you started down that road? (the road to righteousness?) Have you ever considered, you just might have a more sanctified church?!

While you claim your "Canon Laws" were in effect before government laws, I invite you to revisit your own early church history. Roman Catholicism did not always practice or condone the private confessional for "forgiveness of sins". You know what came before your written Canon Law? What you would call the oral tradition. Your church, prior to private confessional, had people go before THE ENTIRE CHURCH BODY to confess their sins. There was no single person absolving them of their sin either. The idea was that getting things out into the open and making a confession, was to repair the wrong and right the situation. The practice was to pray for forgiveness to Jesus Christ himself, but to confess to the congregation. This is what was practiced in the early Christian church. Your church decided to do private confessional after it thought perhaps some of the confessions were a bit lascivious and that it was turning into a gathering for gossip. But the intention was to confess to the entire body. Your church misses the point entirely when people go in secret. I believe it was probably a deterence to further "sin" and "crime" to come out into the open.

Furthermore, you can draw a line. No one, not even regular citizens, are required to report substance abuse or petty theft. But anyone who knows about the abuse of a child, a child or teen that is too afraid or intimidated to come forward on their own, should be put in jail if they do not come forth with the knowledge they have.

4. The lines of separation of church and state should be clear. Crime against humanity, is crime. There is no religious excuse for it, period. You also do not, or should not, get religious exemptions as a non-profit, as no church should, when you use the secular laws governing corporations to your benefit.

Your church takes what it wants to. It uses members of their church who also happen to be in law enforcement, for their own means. It hides it's structure under protective laws of corporations but takes priviledges that no other corporation has. Besides which, your church is not non-profit when half the money goes to the Vatican and the other half is spent paying for attorneys to cover up crime.

Your church is to OBEY secular laws, not be the MASTER of secular laws. There is a big difference. You claim that by making you follow the laws, your church will start making the laws themselves and enforce them.

As for your church retiring from pursuits of zealous fanaticism where they create their own form of "justice", is has never "retired". There have always been people who believe as you do, that your church is "sovereign" and that anyone who objects to it, should pay.

Your wrong ideas and threats are what cause persecution of others and incite others to commit aggregious acts in the "name of God".

Be careful where you stand.

Mama, October 17, 2008
*******************************************************************************

I have decided to paste some information about "confession" from a catholic site. The part that is incorrect is the part where the guy says while public confession was the norm, privately committed sins were only made to a priest. He asserts public sins were things like "apostasy". If that were the case, the comments made by the early church fathers, which this writer includes, wouldn't admonish people from refusing to publicly confess out of shame. The early church made confession publicly, for anything which involved another person. That would include the sin of assaulting someone else or sexually abusing them. It involves more than one person. If it was a sin of eating too much, only affecting one person, perhaps that was a private matter. But if you read the entire texts of the early church fathers, who wrote long before "Canon Law" was established, you can see the original intent of the church that "Christ" set up, was for public confession, not private confession.

Confession


Are all of our sins—past, present, and future—forgiven once and for all when we become Christians? Not according to the Bible or the early Church Fathers. Scripture nowhere states that our future sins are forgiven; instead, it teaches us to pray, "And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" (Matt. 6:12).

The means by which God forgives sins after baptism is confession: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). Minor or venial sins can be confessed directly to God, but for grave or mortal sins, which crush the spiritual life out of the soul, God has instituted a different means for obtaining forgiveness—the sacrament known popularly as confession, penance, or reconciliation.

This sacrament is rooted in the mission God gave to Christ in his capacity as the Son of man on earth to go and forgive sins (cf. Matt. 9:6). Thus, the crowds who witnessed this new power "glorified God, who had given such authority to men" (Matt. 9:8; note the plural "men"). After his resurrection, Jesus passed on his mission to forgive sins to his ministers, telling them, "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you. . . . Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (John 20:21–23).

Since it is not possible to confess all of our many daily faults, we know that sacramental reconciliation is required only for grave or mortal sins—but it is required, or Christ would not have commanded it.

Over time, the forms in which the sacrament has been administered have changed. In the early Church, publicly known sins (such as apostasy) were often confessed openly in church, though private confession to a priest was always an option for privately committed sins. Still, confession was not just something done in silence to God alone, but something done "in church," as the Didache (A.D. 70) indicates.

Penances also tended to be performed before rather than after absolution, and they were much more strict than those of today (ten years’ penance for abortion, for example, was common in the early Church).

But the basics of the sacrament have always been there, as the following quotations reveal. Of special significance is their recognition that confession and absolution must be received by a sinner before receiving Holy Communion, for "[w]hoever . . . eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Cor. 11:27).


The Didache


"Confess your sins in church, and do not go up to your prayer with an evil conscience. This is the way of life. . . . On the Lord’s Day gather together, break bread, and give thanks, after confessing your transgressions so that your sacrifice may be pure" (Didache 4:14, 14:1 [A.D. 70]).


The Letter of Barnabas


"You shall judge righteously. You shall not make a schism, but you shall pacify those that contend by bringing them together. You shall confess your sins. You shall not go to prayer with an evil conscience. This is the way of light" (Letter of Barnabas 19 [A.D. 74]).


Ignatius of Antioch


"For as many as are of God and of Jesus Christ are also with the bishop. And as many as shall, in the exercise of penance, return into the unity of the Church, these, too, shall belong to God, that they may live according to Jesus Christ" (Letter to the Philadelphians 3 [A.D. 110]).

"For where there is division and wrath, God does not dwell. To all them that repent, the Lord grants forgiveness, if they turn in penitence to the unity of God, and to communion with the bishop" (ibid., 8).


Irenaeus


"[The Gnostic disciples of Marcus] have deluded many women. . . . Their consciences have been branded as with a hot iron. Some of these women make a public confession, but others are ashamed to do this, and in silence, as if withdrawing from themselves the hope of the life of God, they either apostatize entirely or hesitate between the two courses" (Against Heresies 1:22 [A.D. 189]).


Tertullian


"[Regarding confession, some] flee from this work as being an exposure of themselves, or they put it off from day to day. I presume they are more mindful of modesty than of salvation, like those who contract a disease in the more shameful parts of the body and shun making themselves known to the physicians; and thus they perish along with their own bashfulness" (Repentance 10:1 [A.D. 203]).


Hippolytus


"[The bishop conducting the ordination of the new bishop shall pray:] God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . Pour forth now that power which comes from you, from your royal Spirit, which you gave to your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, and which he bestowed upon his holy apostles . . . and grant this your servant, whom you have chosen for the episcopate, [the power] to feed your holy flock and to serve without blame as your high priest, ministering night and day to propitiate unceasingly before your face and to offer to you the gifts of your holy Church, and by the Spirit of the high priesthood to have the authority to forgive sins, in accord with your command" (Apostolic Tradition 3 [A.D. 215]).


Origen


"[A final method of forgiveness], albeit hard and laborious [is] the remission of sins through penance, when the sinner . . . does not shrink from declaring his sin to a priest of the Lord and from seeking medicine, after the manner of him who say, ‘I said, "To the Lord I will accuse myself of my iniquity"’" (Homilies on Leviticus 2:4 [A.D. 248]).


Cyprian of Carthage


"The apostle [Paul] likewise bears witness and says: ‘ . . . Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord’ [1 Cor. 11:27]. But [the impenitent] spurn and despise all these warnings; before their sins are expiated, before they have made a confession of their crime, before their conscience has been purged in the ceremony and at the hand of the priest . . . they do violence to [the Lord’s] body and blood, and with their hands and mouth they sin against the Lord more than when they denied him" (The Lapsed 15:1–3 (A.D. 251]).

"Of how much greater faith and salutary fear are they who . . . confess their sins to the priests of God in a straightforward manner and in sorrow, making an open declaration of conscience. . . . I beseech you, brethren, let everyone who has sinned confess his sin while he is still in this world, while his confession is still admissible, while the satisfaction and remission made through the priests are still pleasing before the Lord" (ibid., 28).

"[S]inners may do penance for a set time, and according to the rules of discipline come to public confession, and by imposition of the hand of the bishop and clergy receive the right of Communion. [But now some] with their time [of penance] still unfulfilled . . . they are admitted to Communion, and their name is presented; and while the penitence is not yet performed, confession is not yet made, the hands of the bishop and clergy are not yet laid upon them, the Eucharist is given to them; although it is written, ‘Whosoever shall eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord’ [1 Cor. 11:27]" (Letters 9:2 [A.D. 253]).

"And do not think, dearest brother, that either the courage of the brethren will be lessened, or that martyrdoms will fail for this cause, that penance is relaxed to the lapsed, and that the hope of peace [i.e., absolution] is offered to the penitent. . . . For to adulterers even a time of repentance is granted by us, and peace is given" (ibid., 51[55]:20).

"But I wonder that some are so obstinate as to think that repentance is not to be granted to the lapsed, or to suppose that pardon is to be denied to the penitent, when it is written, ‘Remember whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works’ [Rev. 2:5], which certainly is said to him who evidently has fallen, and whom the Lord exhorts to rise up again by his deeds [of penance], because it is written, ‘Alms deliver from death’ [Tob. 12:9]" (ibid., 51[55]:22).


Aphraahat the Persian Sage


"You [priests], then, who are disciples of our illustrious physician [Christ], you ought not deny a curative to those in need of healing. And if anyone uncovers his wound before you, give him the remedy of repentance. And he that is ashamed to make known his weakness, encourage him so that he will not hide it from you. And when he has revealed it to you, do not make it public, lest because of it the innocent might be reckoned as guilty by our enemies and by those who hate us" (Treatises 7:3 [A.D. 340]).


Basil the Great


"It is necessary to confess our sins to those to whom the dispensation of God’s mysteries is entrusted. Those doing penance of old are found to have done it before the saints. It is written in the Gospel that they confessed their sins to John the Baptist [Matt. 3:6], but in Acts [19:18] they confessed to the apostles" (Rules Briefly Treated 288 [A.D. 374]).


John Chrysostom


"Priests have received a power which God has given neither to angels nor to archangels. It was said to them: ‘Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose, shall be loosed.’ Temporal rulers have indeed the power of binding; but they can only bind the body. Priests, in contrast, can bind with a bond which pertains to the soul itself and transcends the very heavens. Did [God] not give them all the powers of heaven? ‘Whose sins you shall forgive,’ he says, ‘they are forgiven them; whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.’ What greater power is there than this? The Father has given all judgment to the Son. And now I see the Son placing all this power in the hands of men [Matt. 10:40; John 20:21–23]. They are raised to this dignity as if they were already gathered up to heaven" (The Priesthood 3:5 [A.D. 387]).


Ambrose of Milan


"For those to whom [the right of binding and loosing] has been given, it is plain that either both are allowed, or it is clear that neither is allowed. Both are allowed to the Church, neither is allowed to heresy. For this right has been granted to priests only" (Penance 1:1 [A.D. 388]).


Jerome


"If the serpent, the devil, bites someone secretly, he infects that person with the venom of sin. And if the one who has been bitten keeps silence and does not do penance, and does not want to confess his wound . . . then his brother and his master, who have the word [of absolution] that will cure him, cannot very well assist him" (Commentary on Ecclesiastes 10:11 [A.D. 388]).


Augustine


"When you shall have been baptized, keep to a good life in the commandments of God so that you may preserve your baptism to the very end. I do not tell you that you will live here without sin, but they are venial sins which this life is never without. Baptism was instituted for all sins. For light sins, without which we cannot live, prayer was instituted. . . . But do not commit those sins on account of which you would have to be separated from the body of Christ. Perish the thought! For those whom you see doing penance have committed crimes, either adultery or some other enormities. That is why they are doing penance. If their sins were light, daily prayer would suffice to blot them out. . . . In the Church, therefore, there are three ways in which sins are forgiven: in baptisms, in prayer, and in the greater humility of penance" (Sermon to Catechumens on the Creed 7:15, 8:16 [A.D. 395]).

NIHIL OBSTAT: I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004

IMPRIMATUR: In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004