Secrecy
“Any political or legislative initiative intended to ‘force’ the inviolability of the sacramental seal would be an unacceptable offence against the libertas Ecclesiae, which does not receive her legitimacy from individual states, but from God”. It would also be a “violation of religious freedom, legally fundamental to every other type of freedom, including the freedom of conscience of individual citizens, both penitents and confessors. Violating the seal would amount to violating the poor who is in the sinner”. This is according to a statement released today by the Apostolic Penitentiary, which reiterates that “the inviolable secrecy of Confession comes directly from revealed divine law and is rooted in the very nature of the sacrament, to the point of admitting no exception, be it in the ecclesial context or in the civil sphere”. However, “the defence of the sacramental seal and the sanctity of confession – the statement points out – can never constitute a form of connivance with evil; on the contrary, they represent the only true antidote against the evil that threatens man and the whole world; they are the real possibility of surrendering to the love of God, of allowing oneself to be changed and transformed by this love, learning to correspond to it concretely with one’s own life”. “For cases in which sins constitute crimes – the statement reads – it is never permissible to place upon the penitent, as a condition for absolution, the obligation of giving oneself up to civil justice, in accordance with the natural principle ‘nemo tenetur se detegere’ recognised in every legal system. At the same time, however, also sincere repentance and the firm intention to atone for and not to repeat the evil committed belong to the very ‘structure’ of the sacrament of Reconciliation, as a requirement for its validity”. “When a penitent reveals that they have been the victim of someone else’s evil”, the statement reads, “the confessor shall inform them of their rights, and the concrete legal instruments available to report the incident to civil and/or ecclesial authorities in order to achieve justice. The Pope himself, the statement points out, has recently spoken about the sacrament of reconciliation, stressing the “indispensability and inviolability of the sacramental seal” over which “no human power has jurisdiction, nor can lay any claim to”.
“Every priest who hears confessions is bound, under very severe penalties, to keep absolute secrecy regarding the sins that his penitents have confessed to him”, the Catechism of the Catholic Church reads. Moreover, according to canon law, the confessor is not allowed, “for any reason whatsoever, to betray the penitent with words or in any other way”. Likewise, “a confessor is prohibited completely from using knowledge acquired from confession to the detriment of the penitent even when any danger of revelation is excluded”. Furthermore, the sacramental seal applies to “all sins, of the penitent and of others learned during confession, both mortal and venial, both secret and public, which are manifested in order to obtain absolution and are therefore learned by the confessor” during the sacrament of confession. The sacramental seal, therefore, “concerns everything that the penitent has revealed, even when the confessor does not grant absolution: even if the confession is invalid or absolution is not given, for some reason, the seal must be maintained”. Also “those to whom knowledge of the sins from confession comes in any way” are bound to the secrecy of the seal. The absolute secrecy imposed by the sacramental seal is such that “the priest cannot discuss the content of the confession, not even with the penitent himself, outside of the sacrament”, without the explicit consent of the penitent. The seal implies that, once the sacrament has been celebrated, the penitent does not “have the power to compel the priest to disclose the content of what has been said during confession”, for the obligation of secrecy “comes directly from God”.
