Catholic Church responds to abuse inquiry
Australia's Catholic leaders won't back down on breaking the seal of confession to reveal child sexual abuse when they reveal their royal commission response.
The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and the peak body for religious orders, Catholic Religious Australia, will on Friday formally respond to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommendations.
While it will be up to the Pope and his advisers to accept many of the commission's far-reaching recommendations, the Australian bishops have already rejected its controversial call to break the seal of confession to reveal child sexual abuse.
The states are at various stages of considering the commission's call to extend mandatory reporting laws to include priests even if information about child sexual abuse has been disclosed in a religious confession.
The ACBC last month said it had begun discussions with the Holy See about the commission's recommendations dealing with the discipline and doctrine of the universal church.
The bishops wrote to the Holy See last year, after the commission raised the issue of whether the seal effectively protects everything said in the confessional, including if a child reveals they are being abused.
New Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli said the bishops had not yet received an answer from Rome about what the seal constituted.
"It's worth noting that in a sense that question's never been asked in the life of the church before," he said on Thursday.
"The appallingness of what has happened over these last 40, 50, 60 years in our Australian context has raised this now as a question that needs to be asked for the whole world in fact."
The commission called on the ACBC to ask the Holy See to amend canon law to create specific references to sexual crimes against children and end the use of the "pontifical secret" or confidentiality imposed during church investigations into child abuse allegations.
It also called on the church to consider voluntary celibacy for diocesan clergy, despite acknowledging it has been a major strand of the Catholic tradition from the earliest centuries.
The ACBC and Catholic Religious Australia may agree to the royal commission's recommendations that they make the series of requests to the Holy See, but appear unlikely to have the answers about whether those changes will happen.
They are, however, likely to agree to local changes such as improving their processes for selecting, screening and training candidates for the clergy and religious life, and implementing mandatory national standards for people in religious or pastoral ministry.
