Confession law would be unenforceable

July 8, 2019
Jack Murray
Redwood City
 
SB 360, written by state Sen. Jerry Hill of San Mateo, seeks to impose a duty upon Catholic priests to violate the seal of the confessional when he obtains “knowledge or reasonable suspicion of child abuse or neglect t... during a penitential communication ... between a clergy member and another person that is employed at the same site or facility as the clergy member ... [or] ... between a clergy member and another clergy member.”
 
Under Penal Code Sec. 11166 (c) “Any mandated reporter who fails to report an incident of known or reasonably suspected child abuse or neglect as required by this section is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months confinement in a county jail or by a fine of one thousand dollars ($1,000) or by both that imprisonment and fine. If a mandated reporter intentionally conceals his or her failure to report an incident known by the mandated reporter to be abuse or severe neglect under this section, the failure to report is a continuing offense until an agency specified in Section 11165.9 discovers the offense.”
 
It is the essence of any law that it be enforceable. How would such a law be enforced? How would the police or the district attorney know that the priest had obtained “knowledge or reasonable suspicion of child abuse or neglect” in confession? Not from the suspected criminal, certainly, since then they wouldn’t need the priest’s testimony at all! Would the police begin willy-nilly interrogating priests (any or all priests) whether they heard the confession of the suspected criminal? Could they just ask any priest, demanding to know whether they heard the suspect’s confession and when the priest refused to answer, put him in jail under this law? The answer, unfortunately is probably “yes,” unless a court invalidated the law as an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.
 
Since this law does violate the First Amendment, clearly and utterly, it will never come into force or effect, so the question arises why it was written anyway? I think the answer is that the author and the benighted time-servers who voted for it have an animus against the Catholic Church which stinks to high heaven. It will be costly in lawyer’s fees to appeal this law to the U.S. States Supreme Court but it will have to be done. When the law is finally declared to be what it clearly is – unconstitutional – I would hope that the state is required to pay the cost but I doubt it. Jerry Hill is termed out in 2020, so we won’t even get a chance to vote against him next time!
 

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