https://www.nzcatholic.org.nz/2014/07/10/court-may-compel-priest-to-break-confessional-seal-in-abuse-case/ The New Zealand National Catholic Newspaper Wed, 27 Jan 2016 01:24:12 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4 https://www.nzcatholic.org.nz/2014/07/10/court-may-compel-priest-to-break-confessional-seal-in-abuse-case/comment-page-1/#comment-4172 Fri, 11 Jul 2014 22:10:53 +0000 http://www.nzcatholic.org.nz/?p=7528#comment-4172 Understandable as this ruling may be, it is a dangerous precedent. One one hand the US supreme court has just ruled that religious employers can opt out of contraception when providing health care under the new Affordable Health Care Act (“Obamacare”), and now the US judiciary is making inroads into one of the longest-standing privileges when it comes to the confessional. And it won’t be to much avail either: it will drive the church either “underground” (like in Mexico during the revolution or in the Soviet Union) or it will change the way people talk at their oral confessions.

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