Since the national breaking story about the Church’s abuse hotline and an Arizona bishop providing cover for a father to continue to sexually abuse his daughters, film it and distribute it for over seven years, there’s been quite a bit of online discussion about whether the Church really has priest-penitent privilege. The Church is asserting that it does. Some members are saying “Does it, though?”
If you’ve ever been in a Ward Council meeting, you have probably received information about various ward members and their needs, sometimes temporal, sometimes spiritual, discussed with those who are in roles that can provide some kind of assistance. Additionally, if a Church member is subject to a disciplinary council, there are now a dozen men who are privy to that member’s confessed sins.
Beyond all that, there is the question of BYU. When I attended BYU, back in the late 80s, there was no requirement that professors be current temple recommend holders (also not a requirement for callings), but now there is. Since bishops, who may not be associated with their congregants’ university employer directly, are the ones who decline to give someone a temple recommend, usually based on a confessed sin (compelled by a specific set of questions that are asked), they are sharing supposedly confidential information with the employer of the person confessing. Once you link employment to “worthiness,” you no longer have confidentiality. This is also the case for students who attend BYU, which is again, a change from when I attended there when an ecclesiastical endorsement was required to enter but not re-evaluated ongoing by a local student bishop whose opinions of “worthiness” might differ from one’s home bishop.
We talk about leader roulette, and for those working at the BYUs, the roulette is real and has direct financial and academic consequences. If you want to teach students and faculty to lie and to view bishops with distrust, this is the recipe. Only the hopelessly naive and the opinionated will suffer consequences. The end result is a church full of cynics and cowards, at least at BYU.
As a youth, I remember being taught that “sexual sins,” including petting and beyond, required confession to a bishop to become “worthy” again. Sex was basically the only sin outlined as requiring this type of spontaneous confession, not theft or assault or vandalism or domestic abuse. When we were teens, a friend of mine claimed he was confessing to the branch president (he wasn’t) to encourage his friend to confess (he did). Was this process effective, from a Church standpoint? Probably not. The former is still involved with the Church; the latter hasn’t been to Church since high school, and despite confessing did not really make any lasting changes or increase his commitment to the Church. Another friend who confessed something when we were in high school endured embarrassment when the branch president told his wife about it while her parents waited in the next room for their annual tithing settlement, overhearing the whole thing.
When I was a teen, confession had to be spontaneous because we weren’t subject to regular worthiness interviews like adults and BYU students and faculty are. Worthiness interviews are designed in a specific way to prevent someone whose behavior or beliefs are not acceptable from participating fully in specific Church rituals or from holding an influential position at Church. Worthiness interviews are simply not the same thing as a confessional, regardless of what the Church might believe. They might enable confession, but they probe and prompt members in a guided process. And maybe that’s OK, if that’s how the Church prefers to run things, and if Church members are OK with that. Caveat emptor. There’s a reason we are told to give “yes” or “no” answers to the questions without elaboration, and leaders are instructed not to “freelance” on the questions asked. After all, our scriptures (looking at you, Doctrine & Covenants) refer to confession of sins as a public matter, something one does in front of the rest of the congregation to demonstrate true repentance and to obtain community forgiveness. This view of repentance points to a completely different type of confession, one that is about building a spiritually pure Zion society, not about individual remorse and obtaining forgiveness from divinity with “fear and trembling.” Repentance in our scripture is a private matter; confession is public.
When we think about confessional privilege, we always think of the Catholic Church because in Catholicism, regular confession is a sacrament, something spiritually required to unburden the soul and improve one’s discipleship, but these confessions are sacrosanct and completely private between the penitent and the priest. The priest who hears a confession is prohibited from sharing it with any other soul. Not their superiors, not other priests. Nobody can ever hear what the penitent said to them. The priest will be excommunicatd if he breaks the “sacred seal of confession,” even if the person confesses to heinous crimes like murder or pedophilia. We simply do not have anything like this in the Church. But we do assert that things confessed to a bishop are “confidential.” We seem to mean this in the more colloquial sense, e.g. what is confessed at Church stays within the Church. How could we do otherwise when our bishops are temporary, only under the mantle of the calling for 5-7 years?
Catholic-style confession is a completely different matter than Mormon-style confession. The ring of Gyges is a myth about a magical ring that rendered the wearer invisible. The one who possessed it could do all sorts of mischief without detection. Catholic confession reveals one’s dark deeds to someone who is inside of that ring of Gyges; the secrets remain secret. There is still no detection and no community awareness of the crimes one has committed or the secret thoughts and beliefs in one’s heart. Confessing without consequence is an unburdening indeed, relieving oneself of the negative feelings associated with error without fear of punishment or retribution. This is one reason that mafia movies present such a cozy relationship between Cardinals and mob bosses. The Cardinals can keep a secret, and the screenwriters can use this effective device to tell the audience what crimes were committed and what the mobster’s internal state is.
It’s also one reason that a lot of people, since the social media age, have felt solace in confessing their mistakes, sins, and feelings in anonymous boards. There is an inate human need at play. Secrets fester and create a canker on the soul, whether they are sins or not. Telling a secret is psychologically powerful. It unburdens the soul. It takes the power out of the secret in one’s life. One feels lighter, freer.
We just don’t really have that in the Church. You can confide something to your bishop if you want, but if he tells other leaders, there is no consequence to him. If he tells his wife, nothing happens. We tell bishops that confidentiality is important, but our actions tell them it’s not the only important thing or even the most important thing. Things that are more important include helping those in poverty, reaching out to those who are struggling with a hand of fellowship, and yes, policing the actions and beliefs of Church members who are both members of and, in many cases, running our congregations (and attending and teaching at our universities). Bishops typically share information when they subjectively decide that sharing it is to the benefit of the individual or community. Those who have confessed may disagree with their assessment. With 31,315 bishops (and branch presidents) worldwide, they can’t all be winners.
Being open about that is important because it means that there is no such thing as a true confessional in the Church. That’s OK if community purity (of not just action, but also belief) is more important to us than providing spiritual succor. Members can go elsewhere if they want pastoral care; that’s not really in our wheelhouse. Save your confessions for Post Secret or a truly trusted friend. My own preference, which doesn’t matter, would be that we change our priorities, but its been decades since we started down this path, and I don’t see it changing any time soon, if at all. Am I a coward or a cynic? Perhaps both, but I don’t owe anyone a window into my soul. I don’t inherently trust a bishop to do the right thing, even if I think that is their intention, even if I support them and hope they are worthy of the trust members place in them. I open the kimono for doctors, not dentists.
Discuss.