Court breaks confessional confidentiality

The nanny state meets the lawyer state. More and more, laws and policies are requiring people to snitch on others. This time it is just so some lawyer can sue for the emotional distress of being kissed.

ABC News reports:

Catholics are decrying a recent Louisiana Supreme Court decision that reaches into the most sanctified of church places, the confessional booth.

The ruling revives a lawsuit that contends a priest should have reported allegations of sexual abuse disclosed to him during private confessions and opens the door for a judge to call the priest to testify about what he was told. The lawsuit was filed by parents of a teen who says she told the priest about being kissed and fondled by an adult church parishioner.

If the priest were called to testify, Catholic groups say it could leave him choosing between prison and excommunication.

"Confession is one of the most sacred rites in the Church. The Sacrament is based on a belief that the seal of the confessional is absolute and inviolable. A priest is never permitted to disclose the contents of any Confession," Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said in a statement this week blasting the ruling. ...

The lawsuit alleges that in the summer of 2008, a 64-year-old parishioner at Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church in East Feliciana Parish kissed and fondled the 14-year-old girl and continued to pursue her with emails and phone calls.

I assume that the priest will refuse to testify, the lawyer will win, and the Catholic parishioners will have to pay a huge sum for the alleged misbehavior of some old coot. If the man committed a crime, then charge him, but there is no reason to attack a core Catholic belief that has been recognized for a millennium.