(RNS) — In May, Washington state passed a law requiring clergy to report child abuse to the authorities even when it is revealed during the sacrament of confession — a betrayal of confidence known as “breaking the seal” of confession. The law is in sharp conflict with the teaching of several faith traditions, most prominently the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church, which prescribes excommunication for any priest who divulges what he learns in the confessional.
The Washington measure, duly dubbed the “anti-Catholic law,” is now the subject of a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit. As a result of the litigation, on Friday (July 18), U.S. District Judge David G. Estudillo, a Biden appointee, granted a preliminary injunction preventing it from going into effect.
But while most well-known from the Roman Catholic Church, the “seal of confession” is a core practice for many Christians of all stripes. Eastern Orthodox churches hold the confidentiality between penitent and confessor inviolable, and the Orthodox Church in America warns its priests that “Betrayal of the secrecy of confession will lead to canonical punishment of the priest.”
The law has therefore met with opposition by faith leaders and their flocks across the religious spectrum. Though Catholic and Eastern Orthodox bishops have led the legal resistance to the law in Washington, the Rt. Rev. Gretchen Rehberg of the comparatively progressive Episcopal Church said recently, “the secrecy of the confession is morally absolute for the confessor and must under no circumstances be broken. I see no wiggle room here.”
The issue may be clouded by two other forces. One is the Trump administration’s dog whistles over the persecution of Christians, which cause progressive opponents of the president to view any claims of infringement on religious freedom as suspect. But in the case of the Washington law, the shoe fits; anyone who promotes a free, pluralist society should be resolutely against breaking the seal.
The other dynamic is our society’s moral panic over clerical sexual abuse, which has a powerful hold on the public imagination, one that plays into deep-rooted anxieties and stereotypes about gay men. No one denies the horror of clerical abuse or the need for accountability, and there are still too many priests being protected by church leaders. But now 25 years since The Boston Globe’s reporting on child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, clerical abuse has become much better understood. While reliable studies are scarce, it seems clear that clerics are no more likely to sexually abuse children than others in positions of trust.
Gay male priests have long taken the institutional blame for the abuse scandals. In 2020, the Rev. Alan Griffin, a gay, HIV-positive priest in the Church of England, died by suicide after being falsely accused of abuse. The Rev. Bernárd J. Lynch, an openly gay Catholic priest and advocate for LGBT people in the church, has been falsely accused of abuse twice.
Queer men have long made up a significant part of the Christian clergy, particularly in more formal, liturgical traditions. For much of Christianity’s history, this has actually been a source of strength. But as Christian culture has increasingly idealized the heterosexual nuclear family over the past 200 years, many believers have become uncomfortable with the visibility of gay clergy. Today, some progressive critics of organized religion are exploiting this discomfort, using the issue of abuse in the clergy to advance arguments that often echo old homophobic fears.
The Washington law is part of this broader attack and is rooted in the false and deeply homophobic assumption that clerical sexual abuse is tied to the presence of gay clergy and that clergy, presumed by these same prejudices to be gay, are therefore likely to protect abusers. These unspoken assumptions make laws like this possible. Such misguided beliefs should never be used to justify the erosion of religious freedom or to reinforce long-standing prejudices in law.
If progressives are serious about building a just, pluralistic society and fighting Christian nationalism, they must resist the temptation to conflate faith with abuse, sacrifice the rights of the faithful or join in discourses that are propped up by harmful stereotypes in the name of public safety. The fight against clerical abuse must be vigilant, yes, but it must also be principled. Otherwise, we risk replacing one form of injustice with another.
(Katherine Kelaidis, a research associate at the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, England, is the author of “Holy Russia? Holy War?” and the forthcoming “The Fourth Reformation.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)
