This is a simple matter of the Church's interests and influence being put above the law of the land and the well-being of the people.

Well, Jim, I think I'd put it this way:

This is a simple matter of the Church's interests and influence being in conflict with law of the land and the well-being of the people.

It reminds me of an argument I had every morning during the 15 years I shared an office with my old friend Charlie. Charlie, a perennial night school law student, saw the law as supreme, sacrosanct, and infallible. He could see no higher authority than The Law - or, at least, his interpretation of the law. I disagreed. Law is the product of a political process that may or may not represent the will and well-being of The People, and that rarely represents the will of all the people. Nonetheless, the law is the law, and those who transgress it suffer the penalties set forth by the law. But the law reigns supreme only within its own sphere, and we humans exist in many interconnecting spheres. But Charlie didn't understand this. He particularly had problems with the laws of physics and logic, especially when they didn't agree with what he knew from civil law to be true.

There are those who try to put moral strictures on civil law and to say that violation of civil law is "wrong." But law doesn't govern right and wrong - it simply determines what it legal and what is illegal. Now, there are times when moral principles and civil law coincide; and in those times (like murder and child molestation), violation of the law can be "wrong." But the law, in and of itself, is amoral.

Church law operates within its own sphere, and it is valid within that sphere. Again, it does not govern right and wrong, although there are times when church law coincides with moral principle. Despite what might have been the case in medieval times or currently in Islamic nations, church law is neither inferior or superior to civil law. They operate in different spheres, and sometimes those spheres intersect. And in those intersections where there is a conflict between the two systems of law, neither system invalidates the other. Civil law continues to have its penalties, and so does church law. In that situation, and individual has to choose which penalty to accept.

In the laws of nature, actions have logical consequences, and those consequences are immutable and infallible. In church and civil law, the consequences are arbitrary and therefore mutable.

OK, let's look at this law that requires priests to reveal information about crimes that they hear in confession. If somebody can find the actual text of the law, that would be very helpful; but I think we more-or-less have the idea of it. I think we generally agree that in actuality the law doesn't make a lot of difference because it would be rare that information furnished in confession would be primary and essential evidence in the prosecution of a crime; and it seems unlikely that it would happen very often that child molesters and their victims would reveal this information only in the sacrament of confession. Most times, priests aren't going to hear of a crime in confession until after a person has been arrested. It might, however, limit the freedom of a person to confess his sin after he has been arrested but before the trial.

But basically, this law has another purpose: it's a kick in the groin of the Catholic Church, intended to show the church that it is not above the law. And let me state very clearly that this kick is well-deserved. The Catholic bishops of Ireland and the world have violated both civil law and moral principle time and time again in their mishandling of incidents of sexual abuse of children. The bishops are NOT above the law, and it's high time that they learned that.

But this law is hitting below the belt, and I think it may backfire. The law attempts to countermand something that is almost universally sacred to Catholics: the secrecy of the confessional. When you start messing with what people hold sacred, you get into dangerous territory. While the Catholic Church has lost a lot of members in Ireland in recent years, I would guess that there are still many Catholic Irish voters who still consider the seal of confession to be very important - and they will be appalled by this attempt of government use legislation to repeal the seal of confession. The vast majority of Catholics are never going to report a crime in confession, but they nonetheless take comfort in the absolute assurance that what they say in the confessional will be kept secret, without exception. It's ironic, in a way. The "seal of confession" is not actually a very important doctrine in the Catholic Church. It wasn't practiced for the first millennium of the history of the church - only public confession was practiced during the first thousand years after Christ. But for Catholic people, the seal of confession is something that is very important, and violating or attempting to negate that seal, is something they will take very seriously.

So, although I sympathize with the intent of the legislation, I think it's a bad call and that it may backfire. It will be largely unproductive in obtaining evidence of crime, but yet it is an unnecessary attack on something that Catholic people hold most sacred.

So, that's my take on the matter.

-Joe-

P.S. Please note that I do not consider either church or civil law to be supreme, sacrosanct, and infallible. I ascribe those characteristics only to the laws of physics, nature, and logic. I also fit the Golden Rule in there somewhere - "do unto others and you would have them do unto you." That one is sacrosanct to me, too.