108
reddit atheism didn't go far enough
Funny how they decided to stop at islamophobia
...
You're saying it's anti-Catholic to be against child r*pe?
Yes. That is literally the case. Funkystuff is wrong. The argument is that forcing Catholic priests to be mandatory reporters (I.e. they must report sexual assault) is a breach of their civil rights. That is literally what they are saying.
The reason the American bishops are raising a stink about this is that it explicitly creates a different standard for religious authorities that gain information regarding abuse, as opposed to doctors, lawyers, or other professionals who are protected from this duty of having to report on past crimes under penalty of law. I'm not 100% sure about the actual legal fundamentals of the arguments from either side.
IMO what's really going on is that American bishops are interested in using this case to fuel the persecution complex and get some legal victory out of the Trump admin and the reactionary Catholic justices in SCOTUS if it does make it to SCOTUS.
as opposed to doctors, lawyers, or other professionals who are protected from this duty of having to report on past crimes under penalty of law
Except doctors in Washington state are all already mandatory reporters, this just makes priests part of a group that already includes doctors. The article explicitly mentions this. It would have taken you two seconds to look that up even if you had not read the article. This is literally bishops saying that reporting sexual assault violates their civil rights. Hiding behind the sanctity of the "seal of the confessional" (As they shuffleremoveds priests around to avoid them being prosecuted)
Yeah, healthcare professionals like doctors do have the duty to report in Washington State, my bad. I was contorting the example of a therapist who would have the privilege not to report on a crime a patient mentions during therapy, I mistakenly generalized it.
And I definitely think you're right about the intentions of the bishops. Really, it goes deeper than that. They are terrified of the state actually exercising the supervision and diligence that is appropriate to handle the Church's CSA problem. I think cracking down on confessions is not going to be a productive way to actually get the child abusers arrested, so if I'm being a bit cynical I think it's possible that the Democrats are doing what they always do: a misguided policy solution that attracts a lot of controversy but doesn't tackle the root cause of the problem they claim to try to be solving.
Here is a list of mandatory reporters in Washington state.
https://www.dshs.wa.gov/altsa/home-and-community-services/mandatory-and-permissive-reporters
I don't know if this is a good solution to the church's sexual abuse situation. But I think its important to be right about the facts when talking about what actions are to be taken during child sexual assault.
Wow talk about telling on yourself
What's stopping me from making up my own belief system and getting tax-free property and special rights others don’t have?
Just follow members of the IRS around until you collect enough info on how they party that you can file frivolous lawsuits against each of them enough that it impacts their work, and then promise to make the lawsuits go away if they make your organization tax-exempt. Call the whole operation something stupid like "Operation Snow White".
Not much. See also: The "Church" of Scientology.
Legally, you get more or less the same as any other charitable non-profit. You could just skip the religion part and start a BS NGO.
There's something pretty ironic here about the law being written to address a Jehovah's Witnesses problem but the reactionaries instantly call it anti-Catholic.
Anyway, isn't it really stupid for the law to specifically say that it doesn't apply to anyone other than religious figures? Like, it almost seems like the only reason they even made this law was to bait controversy for some reason. Not to mention how obviously non-enforceable it is (any other Catholics here should know that it's very common for confession to be completely anonymous, so Priests can always just lean on that).
edit: Apologies, only part of the law explicitly singles out clergy to no longer be protected from their duty to report when receiving information via privileged communication.
edit edit: Keld correctly points out that this singling out is just for the function of fully clarifying the responsibilities of the clergy as mandatory reporters; it's poorly worded, but it only targets the clergy as much as the rest of the law, and doesn't add more responsibilities to the clergy than other mandatory reporters.
It doesn't say that. It adds priests and rabbis and other spiritual leaders to the list of mandatory reporters. Don't spread misinformation about sexual assault.
We're both right and we're both wrong. I should've checked the text of the law more carefully before commenting.
Emphasis mine:
(b) When any person, in his or her official supervisory capacity with a nonprofit or for-profit organization, has reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect caused by a person over whom he or she regularly exercises supervisory authority, he or she shall report such incident, or cause a report to be made, to the proper law enforcement agency, provided that the person alleged to have caused the abuse or neglect is employed by, contracted by, or volunteers with the organization and coaches, trains, educates, or counsels a child or children or regularly has unsupervised access to a child or children as part of the employment, contract, or voluntary service. ((No)) Except for members of the clergy, no one shall be required to report under this section when he or she obtains the information solely as a result of a privileged communication as provided in RCW 5.60.060.14
The law specifically says that clergy are the only ones who aren't exempted from the duty when they specifically learn about abuse from privileged communication. So, yes, the law adds them to the same responsibility that other public officials have. That's great. But then it specifically carves out a responsibility for them that is a different standard than what other authorities get.
Obviously, if you have a principled anti-religious materialist position you probably don't mind that too much, but there's still an aspect of the state going after clergy on the basis of them being clergy that raises some uneasiness. And yeah, obviously there's only so much CSA a church can get away with before blowback starts to hit.
Yes now let's keep reading.
Nothing in this subsection (1)(b) shall limit a person's duty to report under (a) of this subsection.
When any member of the clergy, practitioner, county 26 coroner or medical examiner, law enforcement officer, professional 27 school personnel, registered or licensed nurse, social service 28 counselor, psychologist, pharmacist, employee of the department of 29 children, youth, and families, licensed or certified child care 30 providers or their employees, employee of the department of social 31 and health services, juvenile probation officer, diversion unit 32 staff, placement and liaison specialist, responsible living skills 33 program staff, HOPE center staff, state family and children's ombuds 34 or any volunteer in the ombuds' office, or host home program has 35 reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or 36 neglect, he or she shall report such incident, or cause a report to 37 be made, to the proper law enforcement agency or to the department as provided in RCW 26.44.040. 38 p
In other words, everyone else also has to report if they find out through privileged information, like a patient talking about abusing/being abused to their doctor, too.
That thing there just makes it so that clergy can't hide behind their role as supervisors of an organization without making, say, the person running a local red cross or soccer club a mandatory reporter. It is very poorly worded and that is what they will pounce on. But be for real.
Right, I see the point now. They definitely should've worded it differently.
I don't know, though, it just seems like it's likely that the USCCB will be able to get this struck down.
Oh they probably will. Especially with this supreme court. Had I made this law I would have specified that anyone covered under (A) cannot get out of their responsibility by citing that they acquired privileged information through a different role. But the damage is done with the wording.
From South Park: Episode 608: Red Hot Catholic Love
Priest Maxi: Uh-yes, uh, I'm afraid if things keep going the way they are, we could lose our entire religion.
Elderly priest: Yes, we've gotta stop these boys from goin' to the public!
Fat priest: They've gotta know to keep their mouths shut!
Other priests: That's right, yeah.
Priest Maxi: Right, and so... wa- wait a minute. What?
Priest: Yes, but we've got to find out why these children are suddenly finding it necessary to report that they're being molested. Stop the problem at its source.
Priest 2: Yes, but how?
Priest 3: [amid discussion] Something has to be done.
Priest 4: We've got to stop this-
Priest Maxi: [rising] Whoa, whoa, hold on a second! The problem is that children are being molested, not that they're reporting it! [all fall silent]
Elderly priest: How do you mean?
Priest Maxi: Well, I mean, obviously, what we need to put a stop to is all the sexual misconduct that is allowed to take place in our churches, and not just tell the children not to tell anybody about it. I mean, right?
Priest 1: Well did any of the children you've molested come forward?
Priest Maxi: No.
Priest 1: Well, that's good.
Priest Maxi: No, I mean! I've never molested any of the children in my church!
Elderly priest: Hih-it's okay, Father Maxi. We're all priests here; the doors are closed.
Priest Maxi: Oh for the love of God! Are you all saying that you've engaged in inappropriate relations with your altar boys? We are here to bring the light of God, not harm the innocent! [the other priests look at him and laugh] I'm serious!
Priest 2: Father, uh, having sex with boys is part of the Catholic priest's way of life.
this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
108 points (100.0% liked)
news
24097 readers
967 users here now
Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.
Rules:
-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --
-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --
-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --
-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --
-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--
-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--
-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --
-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS