Confessional Secrecy?

Question: Time magazine reported “New rules for Keeping Secrets” alleging that Priests and Lawyers changed course making it easier to speak out. The priest revealed in court what someone had told him in confidence. Is a priest free to do this?

Answer: My first response is simply “no”! Very often, I attribute confusion to confused reporting but in this instance it is what the priest himself reported of himself that caused confusion and I suspect some scandal.

In capsule form the case was this. Some thirteen years ago a Bronx resident asked a priest friend to visit him at home—he told the priest he felt terrible because two of his friends were tried and convicted for the 1987 murder of Jose Antonio Rivera which they did not do. Allegedly, he told the priest in 1989 that he himself had murdered Rivera. The priest told him then to turn himself in, which he began to do by saying the same to his Legal Aid lawyer, who gave different advice. Now, in July 2001 Federal Court testimony, the priest revealed in court what Jesus Fornes (since deceased) had first revealed to him.

To outline an adequate response, two canonical realities must be acknowledged and observed. First, Canon 983, #1 states clearly that the sacramental seal of confession is inviolable—it is a crime for the confessor to betray that trust by word or any other way for any reason. Second, Canon 984, #1 concerns what is called “prohibited use of knowledge,” i.e., a confessor is absolutely forbidden to use knowledge acquired from confession when it might harm the penitent. These are the settled law and the certain moral practice of the Church.

At first, some media reports raised a related but not identical question. Namely, what are the limits and/or limited exceptions not of “confessional” secrecy but of “professional” secrecy? Thus, the question is not the status of natural or promised secrets, but rather what is called the “professional secret” one that rests on the condition one will keep it secret. The “professional secret” is the most binding (apart from the confessional secret that admits of no exceptions) as the Catechism points out and explains (CCC #2491).

In modern society, the most important type of “professional secret” involves—physicians, lawyers, psychiatrists, social workers and priests counseling extra tribunal, i.e., priest counselor or confidant apart from or outside the tribunal of Penance.

The moral textbooks do note that professional secrets can admit of disclosure but only by exception, and then, only under the most stringent conditions, (e.g., to avert grave danger to the common good; to avert serious and unjust harm to innocent third parties; or to avert grave danger to the one who reveals; thus, not just some personal danger but only grave danger. Note as well, the Catechism refers to cases only of “very grave harm” (CCC #2491).

Apart from the professional codes and requirements of the other professions, the priest outside of confession raises some peculiar and exquisite problems that demand careful adherence. An older but thoroughly reliable treatment of this subject can be found in R.E. Regan’s Catholic University dissertation: “The Moral Principles Governing Professional Secrecy” (Wash., D.C.; C.U.A., 1941)

Fr. Regan correctly notes; “. . . that the priest, entirely apart from the sacrament of Penance, is the recipient of confidences which must be rigorously guarded, . . . the obligation of extra-sacramenta1 secrecy pertans to those confidential matters entrusted to him by reason of his sacred ministry (ratione sacri ministerii)” (p. 172).

The author continues: “the priest has the serious moral obligation to preserve inviolate the secrets of those persons who confide in him by reason of his sacred ministry. This duty of secrecy is owed by the priest both to the person who confides in him (in commutative justice) and to society (in legal justice).

The duty to the person seeking help takes the form of an onerous contract, or at least that of a quasi-contract, implicitly entered upon by the assumption of the confidential relationship. The revelation or other use of such secret knowledge by the priest contrary to the reasonable will of the client is a sin, grave or light, depending on the nature of the matter revealed or used, against both commutative and legal justice” (p. 173).

It seems to me a fair statement that the basic assumption, among our Catholic people, is that what you tell a priest in confidence goes no further. Whether people are at all aware of the difference between confessional secrecy and professional secrecy, or, aware of some textbook limits and possible exceptions to professional secrecy does not strike me as all that relevant. Our people presume that what they say in confidence to a priest goes no further—period!

Thus, I teach seminarians that they are not free to reveal these extra-sacramental secrets. In a given case of very serious or very grave harm to the common good, they must find some way or pressure to move the person to take it out of this privileged forum and tell someone else who is free to act on it or with it.

In the case at hand, it seems to me that that was the first proper response of the priest involved who told the man to tell his Legal Aid lawyer who, in turn, approached the sentencing judge apparently to no avail. Lawyers, by license and profession, are all officers of the Court and have detailed responsibilities in this regard. In my judgment, what the priest first did 13 years ago was correct; what he did recently was not correct and he should have done and said no more.

Unfortunately and catastrophically, first media reports of the priest’s recent appearance in Federal Court (cf. N.Y. Times [7/17/01] p. B-4) have the priest saying that after the long heart-to-heart conversation “Father Towle said he had granted Mr. Fornes absolution for his sins at the end of their meeting.” Subsequently, the same priest describes his courtroom testimony as: “I was repeating—not revealing—what Jesus Fornes had stated” (N.Y. Times [7/25/01] p. B-3).

Whatever the distinction between professional and confessional secrecy, the mention and the fact of sacramental absolution here changes everything and complicates things both morally and canonically.

I suspect that almost every priest has, at one time, had a long conversation with someone which was concluded with absolution. In that case, the whole prior conversation is privileged and under the seal of confession. It is then no longer a debatable possible exception of professional secrecy but instead a violation of confessional secrecy—a violation that is morally wrong and carries a canonical penalty.

The Time Magazine (8/20/01) byline is, I think, misleading—there are no “New Rules for Keeping Secrets”; there is, rather, the old rule, the good old rule: if you want to keep a secret don’t tell anyone.

There are pressures, sometimes great personal and civic pressures to reveal professional secrets. Priests, I think, should decline to do that and always find some other way to move someone to disclose to someone else what the common good might demand where actual conditions truly require that. Confessional secrets simply and strictly admit of no revelation: “by word or any other way for any reason.”

Please address questions to Msgr. Wm. B. Smith, St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, Yonkers, NY 10704. 

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