SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica (LifeSiteNews) — The Catholic bishops of Costa Rica have voiced strong opposition to a law that would require priests to violate the sacramental seal of confession, by which priests are bound to absolute silence regarding the contents of a penitent’s confession. 

On September 11, Antonio Ortega of the Broad Front political party, introduced a bill aimed at lifting the seal of silence that protects penitents when seeking sacramental absolution of their sins in confession. The law would require priests to violate this seal of silence when sexual crimes against minors are confessed, contrary to the universal doctrine and discipline of the Catholic Church regarding the inviolability of the seal of confession. 

This inviolability was reaffirmed in a 2019 note of the Apostolic Penitentiary, a dicastery of the Roman Curia, titled, “On the Importance of the Internal Forum and the Inviolability of the Sacramental Seal.” 

In the document, Rome declared the inviolability of the sacrament to be a matter of divine revelation, admitting of no exception whatsoever. The Holy See instructed: “The inviolable secrecy of Confession comes directly from the revealed divine right and is rooted in the very nature of the Sacrament, to the point of not admitting any exception in the ecclesial sphere, nor, least of all, in the civil one.” 

Citing the 2019 note of the Apostolic Penitentiary, Daniel Blanco, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San José, stated in a webinar on the proposed law that “any political action or legislative initiative aimed at ‘breaching’ the inviolability of the sacramental seal would constitute an unacceptable offense against ‘libertas Ecclesiae’ [the freedom of the Church], which does not receive its legitimacy from individual states but from God; it would also constitute a violation of religious freedom, legally fundamental to all other freedoms, including the freedom of conscience of individual citizens, both penitents and confessors.” 

Father Alejandro Jiménez, judicial vicar of the ecclesial tribunal of the Archdiocese of San José, commented that the proposed lifting of the seal of confession will not help solve the problem of sexual abuse. He said the proposed law “is not going to provide a solution to anyone’s suffering, it is not going to correct the reality that has been experienced since the abuses, which do not find their origin in ecclesiastical or sacramental reality but are a social evil that the Church cannot tolerate.” 

Attorney José Rafael Fernández, legal adviser of the Catholic University of Costa Rica, raised the issue of further violations of confidentiality that would result from the violation of the confessional seal. 

“If the legislation succeeds in eliminating the confidentiality of confession, what will happen next with professionals who have the right not to reveal certain things by virtue of professional secrecy?” Fernández asked. 

In its 2019 document on the seal of confession, the Apostolic Penitentiary instructed that the obligation to keep the seal of confession is so grave that a priest must shed his blood before breaking silence. “The defence of the sacramental seal by the confessor, if necessary usque ad sanguinis effusionem [even to the shedding of blood], represents not only an act of dutiful ‘allegiance’ towards the penitent, but much more: a necessary testimony – a ‘martyrdom’ – rendered directly to the uniqueness and salvific universality of Christ and the Church.” 

The instruction continued, “The confessor is never allowed, for any reason whatsoever, ‘to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner’ (cic can. 983, §1), just as ‘a confessor is prohibited completely from using knowledge acquired from confession to the detriment of the penitent even when any danger of revelation is excluded’ (cic can. 984, §1).” 

So complete is the seal of silence that it includes “all the sins of both the penitent and others known from the penitent’s confession, both mortal and venial, both occult and public, as manifested with regard to absolution and therefore known to the confessor by virtue of sacramental knowledge.” 

Rome concluded, “The sacramental seal, therefore, concerns everything the penitent has admitted, even in the event that the confessor does not grant absolution: if the confession is invalid or for some reason the absolution is not given, the seal must be maintained in any case.” 

The seal of confession and its legal protection has been a live issue this year with four U.S. state legislatures debating bills that would remove its privilege under law: Wisconsin, Utah, Vermont, and Washington. In 2019 the same kind of law was debated in California. Several bishops have now publicly defended the inviolability of the confessional seal, and Church history holds up the witness of numerous priests who have suffered martyrdom for their refusal to break the silence of the sacrament.  

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