Australian Government Launches Massive Attack Against The Catholic Church, Tells Priests They Need To Report People’s Sins To The Government Or Else Go To Jail

The Australian government’s commission on child sexual abuse has launched a massive attack against the Catholic Church in a report from the Royal Commission in which they have “recommended” that the Catholic Church violate the sanctity of the confessional in order to “report” allegations of “child abuse”, going so far as to tell the Church to change canon law:

The Australian government has recommended that celibacy be made optional for Catholic priests and that they be forced to report any child sexual abuse revealed to them. Recommendations were made in a recently concluded report from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse aimed at protecting children.

“All Catholic religious institutes in Australia, in consultation with their international leadership and the Holy See as required, should implement measures to address the risks of harm to children and the potential psychological and sexual dysfunction associated with a celibate rule of religious life. This should include consideration of whether and how existing models of religious life could be modified to facilitate alternative forms of association, shorter terms of celibate commitment, and/or voluntary celibacy (where that is consistent with the form of association that has been chosen),” the commission said in its final report.

The commission also recommended that the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference request the Holy See to amend the 1983 Code of Canon Law to create a new canon or series of canons specifically relating to child sexual abuse.

“All delicts relating to child sexual abuse should be articulated as canonical crimes against the child, not as moral failings or as breaches of the ‘special obligation’ of clerics and religious to observe celibacy,” the report said.

More than 60 percent of all the survivors who reported abuse in religious institutions said it had happened at the hands of the Catholic Church. The average age of abuse victims at Catholic institutions was also noted as 11 years old.

Some local priests are not happy with all the suggestions, particularly a recommendation on any changes to confession that would force a priest to report information to authorities.

“Laws concerning mandatory reporting to child protection authorities should not exempt persons in religious ministry from being required to report knowledge or suspicions formed, in whole or in part, on the basis of information disclosed in or in connection with a religious confession,” the commission recommended.

Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart told ABC that forcing priests to betray the confessional is a “serious spiritual matter” which could result in excommunication.

“I revere the law of the land and I trust it but this is a sacred, spiritual charge before God which I must honor and I have to respect and try to do what I can do with both,” Hart said.

He said if someone revealed their child abuse to him in confessional, he would feel “terribly conflicted” but would not break the seal of confession.

“The penalty for any priest breaking the seal is excommunication, being cast out of the church, so it’s a real, serious, spiritual matter,” he said.

Another high-ranking local priest, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher, said changing the confessional to force priests to report abuse is a “distraction.”

“I think any proposal to effectively stop the practice of confession in Australia would be a real hurt to all Catholics and Orthodox Christians and I don’t think would help any young person,” he said.

The commission recommended that religious institutions that have a rite of religious confession for children should implement a policy that requires the rite only be conducted in an open space within a clear line of sight of another adult.

“The policy should specify that, if another adult is not available, the rite of religious confession for the child should not be performed,” the commission said. (source)

This is a major attack on the Catholic Church, and all Christians- Catholic or not- need to stand against this because this is a brazen attempt by the government at overthrowing the role of God in society and the government making itself God.

The Catholic Church identifies that God’s grace flows from Him to man via many ways. She specifically points out seven formal ways found in Sacred Scripture this takes place. These are called the Seven Sacraments. One of the sacraments is the forgiveness of sins, also called penance or confession. The short way to explain this is that when each priest is ordained, he is not simply a man who “heard the call of the Lord” as Pentecostals teach, or a man who is a “minister of the word’ such as with a Baptist or other mainline protestant, but the priest is the fulfillment of and continuation of the ancient priesthood of Israel, echoing the words of Christ that ‘I came not to abolish, but to fulfill the law.’ Since Christ restored and perfected the old priesthood of Israel, being that He is the great High Priest who made the worthy sacrifice to God with His own body and blood, He ordained His disciples to continue His ministry acting in His place with His authority.

A Catholic Confessional. A person confesses his sins to the priest on either side. The priest sits in the middle.

As such, when a Catholic goes to confession and confesses his sins to a priest and the priest offers absolution, the theology is that while he speaks with a man (the priest), the priest is serving by his ministry in the place of Christ, continuing the line instituted by Christ Himself. The priest as a man does NOT offer any forgiveness of sins because no man can forgive sins, but it is Christ who offers forgiveness of sins with the priest acting as the vehicle through which He works.

One can see why the reason confession is taken so seriously by the Catholic Church, because when a man talks to the priest, he is talking to Christ with the priest as the intermediary. All priests are instructed in explicit terms that they are never to reveal the contents of the confessional to anybody EVER about ‘who said what about what’ because the priest is simply the scripturally ordained channel through which man speaks through and confesses his sins to God and receives absolution for his sins. To identify a man and his sins to another man, even another priest, is one of the most serious crimes a priest can commit because it is a betrayal of trust between man and God. It does not matter what sins are confesses, how serious they are, if the priest knows who is confessing, or what his personal opinion is because it is a matter between man and God that must be respected regardless of the cost.

The Catholic Church has gone to extensive lengths to ensure that what is confessed between a priest and a penitent remains in confidence. While with some confessionals one can see the priest face to face, all confessionals have a screen wall with a thick layer of cloth or other barrier between the priest and the penitent so that they can hear each other but not see each other, and that people standing outside cannot hear. Indeed, it is a serious sin likewise for people to try to intentionally listen to the sins of another man confessing while he is in the confessional because, just like with the priest, the matter is between man and God alone.

In certain cases, particularly evil governments have sought to force priests to reveal the names of people and what they confess for the reason that any tyrant does, so that he can use it for blackmail, social manipulation, or a host of other crimes. The former Soviet Union was notorious for doing this, and many Catholic as well as Orthodox priests were executed, tortured, or sent to work in the death camps in Siberia for refusing to divulge that which is to remain between man and God alone.

But the idea that a priest could be forced to deny Christ and his vows as a priest or face imprisonment is an idea that has been promoted in the USA as well. Since 2009, the Diocese of Baton Rouge, LA has been in a lawsuit against a woman who made statements about being allegedly sexually abused by another parishioner, and then the priest ‘refusing’ to do anything about it because, as the priest has correctly stated, he cannot divulge that which was said in the confessional because it is a matter between man and God:

A state judge refused Monday to dismiss the Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge and a priest from a 2009 lawsuit by a woman who says that when she was a teenager she told the priest she was being sexually abused by a church parishioner, but he did not stop or report the alleged abuse.

District Judge Mike Caldwell said it will be up to an East Baton Rouge Parish jury to decide whether what Rebecca Mayeux allegedly told Father Jeff Bayhi in the confessional was in fact a confession as defined by the Catholic Church, and therefore confidential, or whether she was merely seeking support and guidance instead of confessing sins.

Caldwell and a state appeals court both ruled last year that Mayeux can tell a jury what she allegedly told Bayhi in the confessional.

The Louisiana Supreme Court also ruled last fall in the long-running case that a priest has no duty to report confidential information heard during the sacrament of confession.
(source)

Truthfully, the woman’s entire story is suspicious because if she was actually being abused, she would not need to tell this as a ‘sin’ to a priest in the confessional, but could approach him IN ANY OTHER CONTEXT to tell him. Since the confessional is THE ONLY place in which statements, regardless of what they are, cannot be divulged because of the nature of the sacrament, it raises a question- is this person legitimately trying to raise an issue, or was this done with the intention of filing a lawsuit so to create a precident by which the state could try to force the Church to divulge the secrets of the confessional or else be shut down, effectively taking control over morality and religion and destroying the Church’s public presence?

In terms of society, the Church is the unifying as well as the separating force in society, bringing together the rulers and the ruled while buffering between them so one does not destroy the other. The great scandal of the Protestant revolution was not even heresy, but that it rendered the Church as a formal vassal to and mouthpiece of the state. It would then only be a question of time until the state decided that the Church was an unnecessary voice, and since it was subject to state control, could be cast off as either a relic of a previous time or allowed to function as an association of the willing but without power, for the state would be the ultimate arbiter of morality before all citizens.

Just as with the case of the woman claiming ‘protection’ against “sexual assault,” the claims of “protecting children” are being used by the government to attempt to overthrow God and force members of the Church to violate their own faith in a particularly serious matter. If Australia was so serious about ‘protecting children,’ it would look into the well-known and documented cases of child abuse that go up to the highest ranks of the nation’s leadership, but that will never be done because they do not care about children unless it means using them to get more power for themselves at the expense of others.

Notice as well in the article that the Australian government identified the Holy See in their report as one of the ‘responsible parties’ for reporting ‘abuse’ to the government. This is not just an attack on the Church’s presence in Australia- it is an attack on the Church worldwide because it is attempting to say that if a case of “child abuse” is alleged to be confessed and if the local diocese does not make the priest divulge that which is said, then the government is then going to attempt to say that the Vatican is acting as a ‘rogue state’ in ‘covering up child abuse.’

This is an absolutely bogus argument in light of the fact the worldwide there has been an entire network of child abuse that has been exposed. It is nothing new for people who have been following the news, and the Catholic Church is the least of the issue, since as we at Shoebat.com and many others have pointed out, statiscally speaking Catholics have the lowest rate of sexual abuse of all major religious denominations (Christian or not), and of that abuse more than 75% is of a homosexual nature. The Catholic Church has a homosexual problem, but this is not the first time this has happened and has been combatted before and defeated by great saints such as St. Peter Damian and St. Bernardino of Siena. It is not good, but the Catholics know their problems, have faced them before, and are able to defeat them.

One only needs to look at the Catholic situation and compare it against the rest of the world to see how serious the problem is. For example, pedophilia is rampant in the UK in all levels of society, such as the notorious ‘Jimmy Savile’ scandal that showed how one man alone molested hundred of children as well as acted as an intermediary supplying the wealthiest and most powerful men of the UK with children for the purpose of sexual abuse. There is also the infamous scandal with Hillary and Bill Clinton, who are not just tied to the infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein as well as the sexual abuse and trafficking of countless children, but also themselves, participated in child abuse.

If people want to blame the Vatican for being a nation that is “hiding pedophiles,”, then before they speak they might want to investigate Israel, for even major people in Israel admit that the Israeli government protects pedophiles and other child abusers to such an extent that Israel is recognized as an international haven for such monstrous people:

Israel has become a safe haven for Jewish pedophiles from around the world, a leading advocate for child sexual abuse victims warned Monday at a Knesset committee pre-hearing on pedophilia in the ultra-Orthodox community.

“Sex offenders tend to move from country to country to avoid jail, but what makes Israel unique is the Law of Return, which essentially grants unhindered access to anyone who is Jewish to come here without any real screening,” said Manny Waks, the chief executive officer of Kol v’Oz, a newly formed nonprofit that aims to prevent child sexual abuse in the global Jewish community.

The Law of Return grants automatic citizenship in Israel to those who meet its definition of a Jew.

Waks was raised in Melbourne, Australia where he attended Yeshiva Centre, a school run by the Chabad movement.  Years later, he reported that he had been sexually abused by two members of the staff there. Waks and his family, who have since been featured in several Australian documentaries, were ostracized by the local Chabad community for coming out publicly with their story.

Along with representatives of several other groups active in preventing child abuse in the Jewish community, Waks met Monday with MK Yifat Shasha-Biton, chair of the Knesset Special Committee for the Rights of the Child.

The full committee is expected to convene for a special session on the topic after the Passover break.

Among those accused of sexual abuse who have fled to Israel, Waks cited the prominent case of Malka Leifer, the former principal of a religious girls’ school in Melbourne, who allegedly assaulted eight of her charges. She is now under house arrest, and the Australian authorities are seeking her extradition. Waks noted several other cases of pedophiles and alleged pedophiles from the United States, Britain and the Netherlands who had fled to Israel either after being charged or to avoid being charged. Some have already been extradited back to their home countries where they are serving jail sentences.

“It seems to us Israel is increasingly becoming a refuge for pedophiles and alleged pedophiles,” said Waks. “It’s an easy get-out-of-jail card for them.” Waks, who is married with three children, recently moved back to Israel, where he was born and served in the army.

According to research data he cited, one in five children in Israel experiences sexual abuse.

“There’s a range of factors that suggest there may be a significantly higher proportion within the ultra-Orthodox community,” said Waks. “I think any closed community would have increased cases, because these cases are silenced. They’re swept under the carpet. Not only that, but in the Haredi community, they don’t even talk about sex, so how can they talk about sexual abuse?”

His new organization, he said, will be lobbying the Knesset to change the statute of limitations so that victims of sexual crimes can have more time to file complaints. (source, source, source)

But all of these facts will not be considered by most people because the issue here is not truth, but the use of facts to justify the immoral evil of anti-clericalism since the Catholic Church is the largest Christian body and likewise the strongest voice of the powerless against the would-be tyrants of any age and in any place. To attack the Catholic Church in such a brazen way is to take a direct strike at all Christians, since if the largest body of Christians can be shut down, silenced, or made ineffective in society, all of the other Christian denominations will follow.

The cover for the book Becoming a Barbarian by Jack Donovan, a homosexual pagan who advocates for the repaganization of America and Europe. He and others in the neopagan movement have been using the wolf as their symbol for the revival of paganism in our times.

It is interesting today that this move to push for such measures against the Church comes with the rise of paganism. The symbol being used by the new nationalists is that of the wolf, and the pagans are even calling the period that we are entering into the “wolf age,” in which ethnonationalism will attempt to return again. Certainly not all churches or Christians will disappear and just be forced underground, but the social presence, moral force, and manpower force necessary to effect change as well as stand against the evils of the rulers and their willing masses will be abolished, and like a flock of sheep that has been scattered will be all the easier to be consumed by the wolves.

Whether you are Catholic or not, know that such a move by the Australian government is likely not made is isolation, and it is not for the good will of anybody. It is a direct strike at the public presence of Christianity in society, for the mindset of the men who are promoting these “reforms” are no different than those of the ancient Roman world who maintained their catamites while finding or inventing reasons to send Christians to the coliseum because they did not want to admit their deeds were evil and so made all attempts to silence the voice of conscience.

People in America and other parts of the Anglosphere have said for centuries that the “Pope” was going to try to “take over America/Britain/Canada/Australia” and change the laws. However, the fact is this was never the case, as the real danger was the reverse, that the governments, out of their malice, would try to either become the Church as with the English Revolution, or just try to shut the Church down. Indeed, actions speak louder than words.