On May 3, 1606, the Jesuit priest Henry Garnet was hung, drawn and quartered in London. No one applauded when his executioner held up Garnet’s heart for all to see and then said the traditional saying: “Behold the heart of a traitor.”
Fr. Garnet was the superior of the outlawed Jesuits in England. In 1534, the English government took control of religion in England—a country that had been Catholic for 900 years. Priests were given choices: Acknowledge the King as the supreme head of the Church in England, leave the country, or be hunted down and killed.
The Jesuits were trained in Europe and then sent on deadly missions into England in order to reconvert the country by peaceful means. However, many persecuted English Catholics had become impatient with peaceful means. Around midnight on November 4, 1605, a man named Guy Fawkes was arrested in the House of Lords. He was found guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder. The plan was to blow the building up while the king and members of parliament were in it.
Fr. Garnet was arrested shortly afterwards for his complicity in what became known as the Gunpowder Plot. The priest had been aware that some sort of violent attack was imminent, but he did not inform the authorities. You see, he learned something of the plot in the midst of hearing someone’s confession. And Fr. Garnet would not divulge what he had learned.
Was he out to protect his friends? Perhaps as a hunted criminal he really didn’t care if the House of Lords blew up. No, the evidence shows Fr. Garnet was always against violence. So why didn’t he call the authorities? Doing so could have averted a possible disaster and may have saved his life. Instead, he said nothing, accepted his sentence, and went to his death. (This last Sunday, May 4th, was the feast day of the Forty Martyrs of England, all executed at the time of Fr. Garnet, including his nephew who was a priest. They were all executed for being traitors because they held to the one true faith.)
Consider a more modern-day scenario: I Confess. That is the name of a 1953 movie about a priest who goes on trial for murder.
The film opens when late at night a visibly shaken parish gardener insists that his priest hear his confession. Once inside the confessional, the gardener confesses to murdering a shady lawyer. The next day the police come for the priest because witnesses saw a man wearing a cassock leave the crime scene. You see, before he killed the lawyer, the gardener had donned one of the priest’s cassocks—the long black vestment a priest wears.
For added insurance, the gardener told the police that he found a bloody cassock in the priest’s rectory. So, the priest was charged with the murder, and like a silent lamb led to the slaughter faced the gallows in order to protect the friend who framed him. Why did the priest do that? Why didn’t he tell the police that the gardener did it?
That is what movie audiences wanted to know. Alfred Hitchcock, the film’s Catholic director explained:
We Catholics know that a priest cannot disclose the secret of the confessional, but the Protestants, the atheists, and the agnostics all say, “Ridiculous! No man would remain silent and sacrifice his life for such a thing.”
Priests cannot disclose the secrets of the confessional because it is the law. The Code of Canon Law (983.1) states: “It is a crime for a confessor in any way to betray a penitent by word or any other manner or for any reason” (See Catechism 2490). This is commonly known as the seal of confession.
Someone put it like this:
A priest, therefore, cannot break the seal to save his own life, to protect his good name, to refute a false accusation, to save the life of another . . . He cannot be compelled by law to disclose a person’s confession or be bound by any oath he takes, for example, as a witness in a court trial.
If a priest violates the seal of confession, he incurs an automatic excommunication. He loses his priestly faculties (Canon Law 1388.1, CCC 1467). The severe punishment should clue us in as to the seriousness and sacredness of Confession.
It’s all quite simple if you think about it: A priest cannot divulge knowledge obtained in the confessional because that knowledge is not his to divulge. The knowledge is God’s. The priest is merely the instrument God uses to administer the sacrament. We saw this in a recent Sunday gospel passage, when Christ instituted the sacrament of Confession on Easter Sunday:
Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.
In last Sunday’s passage, on the 3rd Sunday of Easter, Christ instituted the papacy, the Office of Peter. Notice how He zeroed in on Peter and broke him down in order to build him up so he could feed His sheep.
And it’s interesting: If one of the successors of Peter, a pope, tried to invent confession, say, in the Middle Ages, we could look to that event and study it; we could examine the various debates that occurred on the subject. But here’s the thing: There were no debates. For popes did not invent Confession—Christ did. The early Church and all the early Church Fathers were unanimous on this.
And now, it has come to this: Last Friday, May 2nd, the governor in the state of Washington signed a bill that orders priests to divulge certain sins that they hear in the confessional, or face potential jail time. At the signing the governor informed the crowd that he was Catholic, and that he had an uncle who was a Jesuit priest. He also told the crowd that he needed to sign the bill to help protect the children. That’s odd, because I looked him up and last year his main plank in running for governor was promoting the hanging, drawing and quartering of children in their mothers’ wombs via abortion.
As reported, the bill explicitly singles out priests, removing their “privileged communication” exception, while allowing it for other professionals who may hear of abuse. The author of the bill is a state senator who revealed that she had abandoned her Catholic faith due to the Church’s support for penitential secrecy. In what should shock no one, she already had a history of supporting abortion and the LGBT movement. And so, people who have abandoned the faith are out to punish those who hold to it. They want people who go to confession to unburden their souls to be aware that anything they say may be held against them; that the priest might call the police on them.
Understand something very important: Christ silently went to the gallows in order to protect His friends who framed Him with their sins. That would be you. Yet you keep on sinning, even after you’ve been baptized. What is the solution to this sad state of affairs? What is the way out? Claiming you had an uncle who was a Jesuit priest? Will that provide you cover?
No, the cover is provided under the shade of the Cross, and its extension, which is the sacrament instituted by Christ called Confession. In the confessional you can lift up your heart and tell God, “Here is the heart of a traitor.” Do that, and all the angels and saints in heaven will applaud you. And Christ, the man who remains silent and sacrifices His life for such a thing, will forgive you of your sins.
Photo from I Confess (1953)