Don’t turn confessors into state agents
SIR – Stephen Spear (Letter, February 7) should reflect on the complementary paramountcy of short-term prevention of specific crimes and long-term improvement of general moral ethos throughout society. Removing the absolute confidentiality of the Seal of Confession would turn the confessor into a state agent for the physical enforcement of the former, at the expense of God’s effective agency of the latter. Reporting on a penitent’s confession of child abuse would most likely produce only a physically prevented repetition of the crime, and no more than a grudgingly fear-driven conformity, on the part of one person, but would close the door to any thorough change of heart on his/her, or any other penitent’s part, for which complete freedom of will is so indispensable that not even God Himself can make material force the ultimate motivation to repentance. Moreover, just as by-passing the rule of law to exact retribution is to reduce justice to no more than power, so by-passing the confidentiality of the Seal of Confession reduces all affirmation of information obtained in its privacy to mere subsequently retractable assertion. Daniel Wade London NW9
