On May 2, Washington state Governor Bob Ferguson (D) signed Senate Bill 5375 into law, mandating that clergy, including Catholic priests, report suspected child abuse or neglect to law enforcement or state authorities, even if the information is disclosed during the sacrament of confession.
This means priests must break the seal of confession, a sacred Catholic practice, or face legal consequences. However, to abide by the law means priests will face automatic excommunication under Canon Law, which deems violating the confessional seal a grave offense.
The Catholic Church has come out in strong opposition of the law, claiming it violates First Amendment protections for religious freedom and unfairly targets clergy, as other privileged communications (e.g., attorney-client, doctor-patient) remain exempt.
“Blaze News Tonight’s” Jill Savage, Matthew Peterson, and Christopher Bedford — all practicing Catholics — say it’s an egregious law.
Confession is how “people bring their sins before God and ask for forgiveness and penance. It’s as important as marriage; it’s as important as last rites; it’s as important to salvation as baptism. It’s something that is essential in the spiritual life of Catholics,” says Bedford. “People have to unburden themselves with some darkness, and they only can do that and have that access to the sacrament if they know that the priests, that the seal of confession is legit.”
Further, the law is just “a red herring” that distracts from the real problem: abusive priests who have been historically protected by the Church.
Reflecting on his childhood, Bedford says, “We had family friends who killed themselves after the awfulness that they were subjected to by some satanic priests.”
The issue of child abuse as it relates to the Catholic Church has never been that admissions “were whispered in confession” but rather that the criminal actions of abusive priests “were know to the higher-ups of the church and covered over,” he explains.
“This is an actual attack on the Church, on the sacraments, and it’s a great thing that the bishops are coming up against it,” Bedford says, adding that “I’m really excited to see that the federal Department of Justice is now investigating this law for the obvious — obvious — civil rights violations that it entails.”
Peterson agrees, suspecting that the push for these laws isn’t really fueled by a desire to protect children, as supporters claim, but rather by an “anti-religious fervor.”
There is “a massive and increasing anti-Catholic animus across the West,” says Bedford, citing the 2021 “spate of church burnings across Canada done by activists.”
“A priest who deals a lot with the demonic once told me …’the devil is no longer hiding in the shadows. The devil is very much out in the open.”’
To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.
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