Jesus said that a man must confess his sins if he wants to be forgiven. Without going into the theology of the priesthood, which you can read more about here, Catholics confess their sins to their priests in private and the priest, acting in persona Christi, grants absolution and penance for the penitent.
Because confessing sins is a sacrament and takes place between man and God with the priest serving in the capacity of the apostles as Jesus instructed them. The priest does not have the “power” to do this, but simply is the vehicle through which God works. As such, the priest is not allowed to tell the details of a person’s sins to anybody else. He can talk about general patterns he sees, such as common sins that many confess, but he cannot say “So-and-so said such-and-such in the confession.”
Many governments throughout history with tyrannical desires have tried to force priests to disobey the Faith even on pain of jail or death, and many have opposed them because of the sacred nature of the sacrament. According to a recent California bill, it may attempt to do this same act, trying to force priests to commit apostasy and violate the confessional seal according to a report:
Senator Jerry Hill of California introduced Bill 360 on Feb. 20, which would seek to force priests to violate the sacramental seal of confession in suspected cases of child abuse or neglect.
Clergy are already mandatory reporters in the state of California, but there is a legal exemption for material disclosed in the confessional.
“Individuals who harm children or are suspected of harming children must be reported so a timely investigation by law enforcement can occur,” Hill said in a statement announcing the bill.
More than 40 professions, including clergy, are already covered by state law requiring them to notify civil authorities in cases of suspected abuse or neglect of children. The current legislation provides an exemption for “penitential communications” between an individual and their minister if the requirement of confidentiality is rooted in church doctrine.
The Code of Canon Law states that “The sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason.” A priest who intentionally violates the seal incurs an automatic excommunication.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “every priest who hears confessions is bound under severe penalties to keep absolute secrecy regarding the sins that his penitents have confessed to him,” due to the “delicacy and greatness of this ministry and the respect due to persons.”
Hill insisted that there should be no recognition of the privileged nature of confession in the law.
“The law should apply equally to all professionals who have been designated as mandated reporters of these crimes — with no exceptions, period. The exemption for clergy only protects the abuser and places children at further risk,” Hill said.
A spokesman for the California Catholic Conference told local media that the bill clearly targeted essential religious freedoms.
“Getting the government in the confessional has nothing to do with protecting children and has everything to do with eroding the basic rights and liberties we have as Americans,” said Steve Pehanich in a statement for the conference reported by local news outlets. (source, source)
Earlier today, I wrote an article about the situation of a bill in California allowing for a change in age of consent laws. Consider this previous article and the above in light of the following two videos are from 2017 through the present year, where as noted above, two men with histories of supporting homosexuality and in the case of the latter, being a well-known homosexual, alluding to reductions in the age of consent between adult homosexuals and their victims, which are overwhelmingly teenager males. This same result also bears out in the Church, where it was proven in the 2004 John Jay Study that not only was 81% of the abuse committed by homosexuals, but of said abuse fully two-thirds was against teenagers.
Both Prager and Voris speak frequently of religion, but Voris is of greater concern because he is considered by many Catholics through his website, Church Militant, to be possibly the most “influential” voice in “traditionalist” media circles. Voris will publicly attack homosexuality and does regularly on his website, but then will make statements such as the above, where he will allude to a reduction in the age of consent in a conversation with an open homosexual who has openly admitted his involvement in child sexual abuse and was the reason he lost his public platform. It was not “the left” who destroyed Milo, but his admission of his involvement with “very young” boys.
This reinforces what many already know, which is the infestation of homosexuals in the Catholic Church and who are attempting to destroy her from within. Now while it is true that the Church will not be destroyed, as Sacred Scripture has promised so, it is not to say they will not do serious damage, for as Sacred Scripture also notes in Romans 1, that homosexuals are overwhelmingly driven by their impulses through a series of personal decisions so much that there is little they will not do if they believe it benefits them. It is the reason why many of the “best” soldiers and spies throughout history have been homosexuals, not because of any sort of genetic or innate superiority, but because of a chosen lack of morals in combination with a desire to do anything to win and so have no care for anybody but themselves and their own interests. It is a manifestation of the rawest, most barbaric forms of power and the darwinian spirit so admired by men with evil desires throughout human history.
The purpose of the law says it is meant to help homosexuals avoid having to be forced to “register” for having relations. But the question that one should be asking is, before anything else (even the age issue), is why a specific law is needed to give legal favor to one particular group (allegedly) so they can indulge in sexual activity? Such a philosophy presupposes a general lack of control or accountability on behalf of the sodomite for his actions, suggesting that homosexuals “act” because they are “born this way.” Such a law is to argue as ridiculous an idea as that a man who is a serial murderer is so because he was “born that way,” and he should not be charged as heavily for his crimes when he commits them.
But as noted above, the serious problem is that which was expressed by Prager, Voris, and the many sodomites who have invested religious circles, which is the “age gap” issue. While this law would not apply to a man greater than ten years of age difference- a 56 year old with a 16 year old- the purpose is not so much these “cases,” but to erode the concept of the “age of consent” itself by creating this legal exception. Ten years is an arbitrary number, and if such a law is passed, there is no reason to say that the gap could not be further modified to whatever one desires in the future. Eventually, the laws of the future will have so modified the current laws on the registry that the registry itself will be modified out of existence and will be “forced” to be abolished out of necessity.
What one is seeing now is similar to what happened three decades ago with the “gay manifesto,” where while homosexuality was prevalent and known about in society, it did not have the same status as today. Now, to support the LGBT is to be not a simple majority, but an absolute supermajority of the population and which the support of said behaviors are being carved into American law, making the support of the sin that cries to Heaven for vengeance something that one must support if one considers oneself a “good” citizen. This process, which took place within a space of three decades, happened in an environment with a proportionately stronger Christian culture. Considering the extreme secularism that exists today and the open hatred of religion that has grown with each year, especially now that the masses of Americans are openly speaking in positive terms of socialism in either the international (communist) or nationalist form, it is not difficult to imagine that it will be a much shorter time from a law proposed such as the above to the open legalization of pedophilia.
Note also that the law above does not include just homosexuals, but is also open to heterosexuals. This is because, as noted, the ultimate goal of this is the legalization of the sexual abuse of children. Perhaps one day, if this process remains without interruption, people will look back at shows such as “To Catch A Predator” with Chris Hansen and consider it a “barbarous relic of uncivilized times” while they go about sodomizing small children scarcely learning how to walk. Such a future is not extreme or unreasonable, and certainly not without historical precedent as evidenced by the existence of Sparta, and as there is “nothing new under the sun,” what happened before can certainly happen again if the conditions are correct.
St. Lucia of Fatima said that the Blessed Virgin Mary told her that the final battle between God and the demons will be over marriage and the family. This becomes clearer with each day, where bills such as this and the many others in support of other forms of sodomitic behavior, infanticide, and other anti-family laws around the world are growing in power and turning violently against the Church. Yet at a time when all of this is happening, there are also voices in the Church who will proclaim to be against it but then will curiously support persons involved in pedophilia and support a given person’s views who advocates for the same things which the LGBT are in terms of legal modifications that will allow for the abuse of children and the family to take place.
These are the wolves among the flock pretending to be sheep. They are less known by their public professions intended to be consumed by the public, but rather by the stances they show which they believe in by their personal actions that the public can also see but does not always perceive yet are there for those who have the ears to hear.
Having taken note of this, one can note how the state of California is using claims of “helping children” and “saving” them from “sexual abuse” in order to enforce a new anti-Catholic and ultimately, anti-religious tyranny against the Church, a tyranny which is “new” in the terms of our times, but is quite old and has repeated throughout history. If the State of California was serious about stopping “abuse,” they would be attempting to force priests to violate objective divine law, but they would be cracking down on the homosexual movement as it is they who are the overwhelming supermajority of all child sexual predators and is where the focus needs to be.
George Carlin had a famous (and profanity-laced) rant about “children”, where he noted how America has a “child fetish” in the sociological way, where “the children” are used as a rallying cause for particular ideas not actually related to children or the benefit of children. In the same way here, the genuine abuse of children at the hands of sodomites is being used by the defenders of Sodom in order to persecute the Catholic Faith and in turn, all Christians while at the same time reinforcing the support of Sodom in California.
If this law passes, one should expect many priests to possibly go to jail for upholding the dignity of the sacrament of the Confessional. Given how it was public knowledge that in the Soviet Union, the government would attempt to spy on the confessional or to force priests to divulge what was said in the confessional, one should ask how different the USA is becoming now from what the USSR was, only in a different time with different faces and a different approach in form but no less vicious or evil in intentions or results desired.
There have been bad priests, and they need to be exposed and done so publicly. That said, the constant attacks on priests and the priesthood needs to stop in the manner and intensity with which it is being presented- especially from those such as Voris -because it is being used to fuel laws such as these, whose purpose is nothing less than to repeat the evils of the Protestant Revolution, French Revolution, Soviet Revolution, and of all the persecution of old. It is the use of legitimate evils and claims of stopping said evils to furnish another and greater evil, for as always, the worst of evils are always hidden under the most noble of intentions.