It's official, it's legal, it's Ozzie, it's sickening.
As of yesterday, any Catholic priest in Victoria, Australia is liable to be arrested for hearing confessions.
All the police need to do (and it shouldn't be too hard, even for Melbourne's Keystone Cops - vide Cardinal George Pell) is send in a nark to confess to some fictitious sin of pedophilia, then sit back and wait, while Father chews his fingernails and tosses and turns at night.
When the statutory time for reporting such an offence is up, they can arrest and charge him for failure to disclose, and Father could be banged up for three years.
"Our promise," says Attorney-General Jill Hennessey piously, " to put the safety of children ahead of the secrecy of the confession is in full effect and there is no excuse."
No excuse for Father then, for committing a most serious sin in violating the seal of the confessional and incurring one of the most severe penalties under the law of the Catholic Curch, that of immediate excommunication latae sententiae (canon 1381).
Plenty of excuse for Catholics however, for failing to confess their sins at least once a year, and not just Catholic men - sadly, as we know, women are capable of pedophilia, too.
And if priests prefer to break the seal of the confessional rather than risk imprisonment, Catholics could feel justified in not confessing any sins to such priests. In other words, they would no longer be able to practise their faith.
And priests will no longer be able to preach their faith freely, either. Because any priest who makes himself known - as a certain Cardinal Pell did, for offending the sensitivities of LGBTQ+ people - by preaching or teaching that their ways (or the ways of abortionists, or Planned Parenthood, or euthanasia proponents, or Freemasons) are evil, is likely to be targeted and trapped by the fuzz, as Cardinal Pell was.
Brother Alexis Bugnolo (Franciscan Friar of the Immaculate and author of the 'From Rome' blog) advises priests to protect themselves by declaring publicly that they will not abide by this law, in order to prevent loss of confidence in the clergy among the faithful during the administration of the sacrament.
But the fact remains that this law is iniquitous. It attacks the heart of the Church, the Eucharist, inasmuch as forgiveness of serious sin in the Sacrament of Penance is a prerequisite to the reception of the Eucharist in Holy Communion.
Any Catholic in juridical authority or the police who assists or insists on the imposition of this evil law will incur on him or herself, as an accomplice, excommunication by Canon 1329.
Can Australians depend on their bishops to declare an intention of imposing excommunication on anyone who enforces this law? Remember, they've lost their leader, Cardinal Pell, himself locked away in solitary confinement on charges trumped up by this very same police force of Victoria, for crimes only an idiot or a malevolent would find credible.
So it's sickening too, to read in Cathnews, 'Australia's most frequently visited Catholic website', no fewer than three articles on the 'disgraced' Cardinal Pell's impending final appeal, including a related story from the Vatican on his original conviction, with not the slightest reference to his need of prayers, or the need of prayer for the Church throughout Australia, as evidenced by the heinous law in the State of Victoria which ironically came into effect the very same day.
The Catholic Church in Australia is now under legal persecution. But we know from two thousand millenia of history what persecution does for the Catholic Church.
Persecution produces prophets. And saints.
vi
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