Australia
Related: About this forumQueensland passes law to jail priests for not reporting confessions of child sexual abuse
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-08/queensland-law-jail-priests-not-reporting-child-sex-confessions/12642144Queensland passes law to jail priests for not reporting confessions of child sexual abuse
By state political reporter Allyson Horn
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)like murder?
And will doctors and lawyers also be required to report?
Eko
(8,408 posts)And most states already require a doctor to report to the authorities any violence related injury.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)are dictated legislatively.
(Or, in at one case , by courts)
Anyway, you see your priest for counsel just like you see your lawyer. The rights are limited and were legislated for good reason, so no need to mess with them.
If you can't make the case without the priest, you may not have much of a case anyway.
Eko
(8,408 posts)for legal reasons, seeing a priest for moral counsel is in no way the same thing. The lawyer is there to represent you in the face of the constitution and our laws, not so with the priest. The case may actually have evidence of wrong doing but the addition of the priests testimony may put it over the edge of guilty. It doesn't need to be that the priest makes the case, they may just add to the preponderance of evidence, enough to convict. Without the priests testimony, it may not be enough.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)and jurisdictions. Moral an ethical codes are generally considered to supercede them and the law is often as not derived from them.
None of this really has anything to do with any deities, although deities have come in handy for justification.
When you go to a priest to confess, it is not to hide your guilt, it is to explore your guilt. Similar to what therapists and lawyers do.
I suspect this particular provision was due to priestly pedophilia, but it won't have much effect. Lawmakers and prosecutors will laud themselves on taking great steps to solve the problem.
Eko
(8,408 posts)Have no idea why you would say that. There are countless different moral and ethical codes across our country. None of them supersede the law. That is why we have the law, to bind us no matter our moral and ethical differences. You may explore your guilt with a therapist but you do not do that with a lawyer. Religion does not supersede the law no matter how much some people may want it to.