Louisiana Judge Rules That Priests Don’t Have to Report Abuse if They Hear It During Confession

[whatthehey]

144. Universal as in to all religions. Clearly things like Aztec sacrifice are not and should not be ok

I specifically DON'T want any government deciding what religions are valid because I know in that case in this zeitgeist "none of the above" would be first under the bus. But what does that leave as options? Either all religions then must be universally protected or none. Without an official validity test there can be no other choice. Clearly 1A supports the former.

Yes there are unsavory aspects of many religions which should be forbidden. Human sacrifice at one extreme. Withholding medical care should be but isn't in many states at least. Polygamy theoretically I could see as permissible with protections but it is not right now. Strangely the government is stronger there than on letting kids die with easily treatable conditions God can't manage as well as doctors for some reason.

But even if we were consistent and banned all these things, there is a difference. These actions directly cause harm. The state thus has a compelling interest in overriding free exercise, a long standing exception to pretty much all constitutional rights (felons can't have guns, we can't use free speech to plot a massacre,etc). Confessional inviolability per se harms nobody. Even in extremely fanciful scenarios where a priest is told of a planned crime, we have to imagine a criminal who cares enough about the sacraments to offer this in confession but not enough to be dissuaded by the priest's presumptive dissuasion and threat of withheld absolution. I'm no priest but I'm fairly confident in assuming absolution depends on contrition and repentance, both of which are kind of tricky to grant when we are talking about a crime in the future. If the parishioner goes ahead and plants the bomb, it's pretty clear he didn't repent of his plans. Bad prognosis then for his putative immortal soul. Anybody who took confession as a sacrament seriously enough to reveal murder would take it seriously enough to wait until after the murder took place before revealing actionable details.

Restriction of free exercise is obviously possible and should be taken as granted. If it were not we'd have no murders as every would be killer would be an ardent devotee of sacrificial faiths. That does not mean religious freedom is not universal (applied to all religions) but that it is not unlimited (applied to every aspect of all religions) it should depend on, and does, a compelling interest in avoiding a direct and integral harm caused by an aspect of that exercise, and be applied again universally just like free exercise. So no religion gets to do human sacrifice because it kills people per se (I have no idea how many worshippers of Quetzalcoatl are out there, but I bet it's not zero and I want them to have free exercise too, sacrifice excepted). Sealed confession doesn't kill people per se, any more than drinking beer kills people per se or overeating kills people per se. They are legal too for the exact same reason. MADD and health nuts may squawk that they enable and exacerbate deaths with far far far more merit than we could say for confessional secrecy, but they should not be banned either, should they? And we don't even have an ennumerated right to them. So how can we sensibly deny the confessional seal?