Europe

London, England, Jan 21, 2020 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- An undergraduate student in a midwife program was barred from placement in a hospital, reportedly due to her pro-life beliefs. The decision was overturned last week, but free speech advocates say the case is troubling.

According to The Telegraph, Julia Rynkiewicz, a 24-year-old student at the University of Nottingham in the U.K., was blocked from entering her program’s hospital placement phase, after the university learned of her pro-life beliefs and her leadership in a pro-life student group.

Rynkiewicz underwent a “fitness to practice” hearing by the school last Monday.

While the university overturned its decision and will allow Rynkiewicz to continue as a midwife student, the investigation and temporary ban from the placement set her back a year in her studies.

Concerns were raised by school officials about Rynkiewicz’s fitness to practice as a midwife after they saw her tending a booth at a school fair in her position as president for Nottingham Students for Life (NSFL), an approved pro-life student group that supports life from conception to natural death.

Just days after the fair last September, Rynkiewicz said she received a letter from officials at her Midwifery School saying that a formal complaint had been filed against her due to her pro-life activities.

The complaint alleged that she had “provided reproductive health advice without the support of a registered midwife and…expressed personal beliefs regarding reproductive sexual health in the public domain (including the press and social media) to the effect that it may create the perception of an impact on patient care,” The Telegraph reported.

“I think it’s important to remember that being pro-life isn’t incompatible with being a midwife,” Rynkiewicz, who is a Catholic, told The Telegraph.

The Abortion Act of 1967 in the UK allows for conscientious objection to abortions for healthcare providers.

Rynkiewicz said she is concerned about what her case could mean for freedom of speech on university campuses. “But (universities) should be a place where we can speak up about your beliefs and debate with people in a civilized way so I’m shocked that this happened,” she told The Telegraph.

Pro-life advocacy and legal groups spoke out on behalf of Rynkiewicz, arguing for her freedom of speech and right to conscientious objection.

“What has happened to Ms. Rynkiewicz is a flagrant violation of her moral and legal right to freedom of expression,” Mark Bhagwandin, senior education and media officer at pro-life group Life Charity, told The Telegraph.

Laurence Wilkinson, legal counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom International, told The Telegraph that this case “represents a very chilling prospect for freedom of speech on campus.”

“Despite the allegations being dismissed, the practical effect of this investigation is that Julia is now forced to graduate one year later than her classmates. It is to Julia’s credit that she remains absolutely committed to completing her training, caring for women and bringing life into the world,” he added.

“She is now considering her options, as no student should have to go through this kind of daunting process in the absence of clear and compelling reasons.”

Rynkiewicz told The Telegraph that she is demanding an apology from the school, and that she has filed a formal complaint about her case against the school. She added that she is seeking compensation for the stress and inconvenience caused to her, and that she is willing to take her case to court if necessary.

“It all felt a bit ridiculous and I have had to put my life on hold for a year and that’s been frustrating.  I have been suspended for almost four months as a result of not being able to attend my placement and been forced to take year-long interruption to my studies. I won’t be back until September and will now be graduating a year later than I wanted to,” she told The Telegraph.

“I would quite like an apology for everything they have put me through. I feel fine about it all now but I would still like them to apologize as a matter of justice. I suppose that they have realized they have done wrong and (I hope they) will change it so no one else has to go through what I have,” she said.

A spokesperson for the University of Nottingham told The Telegraph that it takes fitness to practice investigations seriously, “to ensure they can provide appropriate and professional advice and care to patients.”

The university added that it would be considering ways to help Rynkiewicz reconvene her studies without further delay.

“The student’s complaint will be carefully considered while their School is actively considering how they can recommence their studies without delay,” the school said.

[…]

Rome, Italy, Jan 21, 2020 / 03:48 pm (CNA).- The Legionaries of Christ on Jan. 20 opened its 2020 Ordinary General Chapter in Rome, which convenes every six years with the duty to elect the general government for the order and to address the most impor… […]

Madrid, Spain, Jan 21, 2020 / 02:58 pm (CNA).- The Association of Christian Lawyers in Spain filed a complaint last week with the Prosecutor’s Office against the newly appointed director of the Institute for Women and Equal Opportunity, Beatriz Gimeno. The group says Gimeno committed a hate crime by authoring a 2013 article in Eldiario.es justifying the burning of churches.

Hundreds of churches were burned and priests were killed in Spain during the 1930s, as the Church faced a period of violent persecution.

Gimeno referenced church burnings in her article, saying, “In those countries where the Church (or churches) are on an equal footing with everyone else’s freedoms, no one feels the need to burn them. But that’s not our case. The deep loathing that many people feel here for the Catholic Church has been earned.”

“Here religion has never been a personal option that is lived freely and peacefully, but it has always been an imposition that falls upon us from above in all the structures of the State,” she said.

“The Church was an institution so hated by the working class, by the peasantry, by the majority of the intellectuals that, as soon as the spark was lit, people ran to burn churches.”

In the October 2013 article, entitled “The Church: a new twist,” Gimeno accused the Church of being an insatiable monster that seeks to dominate society and impose strict sexual rules, while failing to address problems of poverty and inequality.

“The Church in Spain has always been one of the main allies of economic power and an economic power in itself,” she said.

The president of Christian Lawyers, Polonia Castellanos, is confident the complaint will be successful, saying, “the Prosecutor’s Office would have to act in view of the hate speech.”

Gimeno was president of the Spanish LGBT Federation from 2003 to 2007 and was in charge of equality advocacy for the left-wing populist Podemos party in the Madrid autonomous region.

She was named director of the Institute for Women and Equal Opportunity, a government post, by Equality Minister Irene Montero, also of the Podemos party, who in turn was recently appointed to her position by the newly formed left-wing coalition government.

The new coalition government was formed in Spain Jan. 7, with the Podemos party and the Spanish Socialist Workers Party signing on to a 10-point pre-agreement, a type of platform.

The Spanish bishops have expressed serious concern about the direction the new government will take the country.

When the announcement of the pre-agreement was made, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares of Valencia said that with it, “a cultural change is established, a way of thinking is imposed, with a vision of man intended to be spread to everyone – the approval of euthanasia, the extension of new rights, gender ideology, radical feminism, bringing up historical memories that foment hatred and aversion.”

In a Jan. 4, a few days before Pedro Sánchez of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party took office as Spain’s new prime minister, the cardinal said in a letter that the country is in “a critical situation, a true emergency in face of the future.” He called all the faithful to pray for the country.

In a letter also published in early January, Bishop Ginés García Beltrán of Getafe also asked for prayers for the country and said that Spain was entered a “new political era.” The prelate said he had received numerous questions about whether the Spanish bishops were concerned.

Given the talking points “repeated in all the campaigns and government proposals about an exclusive secularism, or against religious freedom – which is not only to profess my faith, but to live according to it – the conception of man and life contrary to natural law, or the real defense of the poorest, without forgetting the role of churches and religions in a democratic society, we can say that there is expectant concern,” the bishop said.

However, he added, “if we’re talking about worry as fear of (the Church being) insignificant or invisible, rejected or held in contempt, in my case, frankly, no.”

“The Church belongs to the Lord, and the barque will be weak and poor, but in the storm it becomes strong because the sail that drives it is the power of the Risen One,” the bishop said.
 

[…]

Paris, France, Jan 21, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- Debate began on a bioethics bill in the French Senate Tuesday after tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Paris to protest state funding for medically assisted procreation for lesbian … […]

Douglas, Isle of Man, Jan 16, 2020 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- A proposal to survey lawmakers’ support to legalize assisted suicide on the Isle of Man drew criticism from disability groups and other foes of the practice, who say it promotes “despair” rather than support for the vulnerable.

 
“There is no safe system of assisted suicide and disabled people want help to live, not to die,” said the disabled persons’ advocacy group Not Dead Yet UK. The group asked residents of the Isle of Man to write their legislators to voice their concern and to call for opposition to the motion set for a Jan. 21 vote.
 
The group said it is “very concerned” by the proposed motion to determine whether the parliament, known as the Tynwald, is “of the opinion that legislation to allow for voluntary assisted dying should be introduced.”
 
The Isle of Man, a self-governing crown dependency located between England and Northern Ireland, has about 84,000 people.
 
Efforts to legalize assisted suicide have repeatedly failed to pass the legislature on the Isle of Man. The last vote, held in 2015, failed by 17-5. 
 
Proponents of legalizing assisted suicide phrase it in terms of “assisted dying” or “aid in dying.”
 
One proponent, a Member of the House of Keys, the lower house of the Manx parliament, has proposed a motion to introduce legislation to legalize the practice. Dr. Alex Allinson said that if the initial reception of his motion is favorable he would introduce a private member’s bill and carry out a “full, public consultation,” the Manx news site IOM Today reports.
 
While a private member’s bill would not have support from any political party, he claimed to have the support of several backbencher legislators.
 
Allinson took a similar route when he sponsored the Abortion Reform Bill 2018, which resulted in one of the most permissive abortion laws in the British isles.
 
While the disability advocates of Not Dead Yet UK denied assisted suicide is ever safe, Allinson cited changes in the Australian states of Victoria and Western Australia, which in his view allowed assisted suicide with “protections against coercion.”
 
“An assessment of capacity is key to most medical procedures and policies and will need to be built into the consent process but there are clear examples around the world where this has been managed successfully,” he said.
 
While there have been previous reports and committee inquiries into assisted suicide on the isle, Allinson said there had been “a change in public attitudes towards supporting assisted dying,” BBC News reports.
 
“Such a debate is just the start of a potentially lengthy journey to achieve a change in our law,” he said.
 
“We know that people with terminal illness are taking their own lives on our island rather than suffer untreatable pain and anguish,” said Allinson. “This debate is not about the right to die, rather the right for those whose death is imminent to take control of how and where they die and to be able to plan with their families and loved ones to leave them with dignity at a time of their choice.”
 
The U.K. coalition Care Not Killing noted that the motion in favor of assisted suicide is listed below a Tynwald agenda item to receive a committee report on suicide and to approve 13 recommendations for suicide prevention and for psychological support of people experiencing “moderate to severe emotional reactions to illnesses.”
 
“These should serve as reminders that no group should be excluded from efforts to prevent suicide, including those influenced by serious illness,” the coalition said Jan. 13. Any proposal to legalize assisted suicide, it warned, tries to separate “those suicides which should be discouraged, and those which should be brought to fruition.”
 
“Members of Tynwald Court should focus on suicide prevention for all, and access to high quality palliative and social care for all, rather than settling for assisted suicide’s counsel of despair,” said Care Not Killing.
 
The group warned that there is no evidence that assisted suicide has become safer or easier to regulate, nor is there evidence that the Isle of Man’s provision of end-of-life care is so great “that no one could be driven to seek their own death for fear of being a care burden or financial drain.”
 
Care Not Killing is a coalition which includes both individuals and organizations like disability and human rights advocacy groups, healthcare providers, and faith-based groups. It opposes the weakening or repeal of laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide while promoting better palliative care.
 
Backers of legal assisted suicide include the group Isle of Man Freethinkers, which holds it a matter of personal autonomy “to make decisions about their life and death,” the group chairwoman Vicky Christian said, according to the BBC.
 
The Manx Catholic presence includes six parishes with seven churches. It is a pastoral area under the Archdiocese of Liverpool.
 
In 2015 both Catholic and Anglican leaders in England and Wales welcomed the British Parliament’s defeat of legal assisted suicide by a vote of 330-118.
 
Archbishop Peter Smith of Southwark, speaking on behalf of the Catholic bishops, said the U.K. parliament recognized “the grave risks that this bill posed to the lives of our society’s most vulnerable people.”
 
If the Manx parliamentary motion passes and results in legislation, and the legislation is passed in the House of Keys, the proposal would then head to the Legislative Council, the upper house of the legislature.
 
The Anglican bishop of Sodor and Man, Peter Eagles, is an ex officio member of this body. However, the bishop previously voted for the final version of Allinson’s abortion legislation, after voting against initial versions.
 
Some British professional groups have weakened their stance on assisted suicide. In 2019 the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Nursing changed its stance to neutrality on assisted suicide, when the groups had previously opposed it. The British Medical Association and the Royal College of GPs are carrying out surveys on the topic, IOM Today reports.

[…]

Rome, Italy, Jan 16, 2020 / 11:01 am (CNA).- The Catholic Church in Italy marked its 31st annual Day of Jewish-Christian Religious Dialogue with a discussion between Rome’s chief rabbi and a Catholic priest who is a professor of the Old Testament… […]

Lyon, France, Jan 15, 2020 / 07:01 pm (CNA).- Bernard Preynat, a former priest of the Archdiocese of Lyon, is on trial before a civil court in France. He has been accused of sexually abusing dozens of minors between 1971 and 1991; he was found guilty by an ecclesiastical tribunal last year.

Allegations against Preynat, 74, became public in 2015. Prosecutors dropped the case the following year after an initial investigation, but a victims’ group with more than 80 members who say they were abused by Preynat led to a reopening of the case.

Preynat led a scouting camp until 1991, when parents accused him of abuse to the Lyon-Vienne archdiocese. He was then banned from leading scouting groups, but remained in ministry until being removed by Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon in 2015.

Cardinal Barbarin was convicted by a French civil court in March 2019 on charges of failing to report the allegations against Preynat.

An ecclesiastical trial against Preynat was opened in August 2018, and he was convicted in July 2019 of committing delicts of a sexual character against minors under the age of 16. He was sentenced to dismissal from the clerical state.

“In view of the facts and their recurrence, the large number of victims, the fact that Father Bernard Preynat abused the authority conferred on him by his position within the scout group that he had founded and which he led since its creation, assuming the dual responsibility of head and chaplain, the tribunal decided to apply the maximum penalty provided for by the law of the Church, namely dismissal from the clerical state,” the Lyon archdiocese stated July 4, 2019.

At his civil trial in Lyon Jan. 14, Preynat acknowledged “caressing” boys, saying, “it could be four or five children a week.”

“I have heard the suffering of these people, which I’m guilty of causing,” he said. “I hope that this trial can take place as quickly as possible.”

He is charged with sexual assault of 10 minors from 1986 to 1991, and faces up to 10 years in prison.

He has been accused of abusing some 80 boy scouts who were between 7 and 15, beginning in the 1970s, but many of the incidents have passed the statute of limitations.

Preynat’s trial was to have begun Jan. 13, but was delayed a day so lawyers could participate in a protest of planned pension reforms.

In 2017, Cardinal Barbarin told Le Monde that he did not conceal allegations against Preynat, but that his response to the allegations had been “inadequate.” He said he opened an investigation against Preynat after becoming aware of the allegations against him.

The cardinal was given a six-month suspended sentence when he was convicted of failure to report the allegations against Preynat, but has appealed. The result of his appeal should come later this month.

Cardinal Barbarin offered to resign as Archbishop of Lyon, but its acceptance is pending the outcome of his appeal; he has, however, stepped back from the governance of his see. Bishop Michel Dubost has been serving as apostolic administrator of Lyon since June 2019.

[…]

Edinburgh, Scotland, Jan 15, 2020 / 02:15 pm (CNA).- A Scottish bishop accused of committing plagiarism in his doctoral dissertation told CNA that while he never intentionally committed any act of plagiarism, he will accept whatever consequences might come from the accusation.

“I can categorically state that there was absolutely never any intention to plagiarise any work,” Bishop Stephen Robson of Dunkeld, Scotland, told CNA January 14th.

The bishop’s remarks came in response to a 2019 article in the scholarly journal Analecta Cisterciensia, written by the journal’s editor, Fr. Alkuin Schachenmayr, a Cistercian priest living in an Austrian monastery.

The article claimed that “there seem to be dozens of passages in Robson’s dissertation which are apparently identical or remarkably similar to texts published by other scholars, yet the author does not attribute these sources.”

“My work was checked every stage by Father Herbert Alphonso SJ my supervisor, now deceased. I repeat, whatever the person you mention has claimed, there was never any intention to deceive or plagiarise. I was simply trying to understand St Bernard a bit better,” Robson said.

Robson completed his dissertation, “With the Spirit and Power of Elijah (Lk 1,17). The Prophetic-Reforming Spirituality of Bernard of Clairvaux as Evidenced Particularly in his Letters,” at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University in 2003.

The text was awarded the university’s 2004 Premio Bellarmino, the annual prize given to the best dissertation completed at the university.

“One must ask whether the jury responsible for awards of excellence at the Gregorian succeeded in identifying one of the institution’s best dissertations of 2003,” Schachenmayr wrote.

Robson’s dissertation was also published as a 2004 book by the Gregorian University’s publishing house.

And while Robson insisted that he had no intention to plagiarize, he told CNA that he will accept the judgment of his alma mater regarding his dissertation.

“I am happy for the Gregorian to nullify my text if they think fit,” the bishop said.
 
Schachenmayr’s study noted that Robbson’s dissertation contained several passages identical or nearly identical to already published scholarship. Those passages give no indication of their source material.

Among the scholars from whom Robson apparently copied are Bruno Scott James, Jean Leclercq, Friedrich Kempf, and Robert Bartlett, according to Schachenmayr.

Some of those scholars were mentioned as sources in his dissertation, even while particular verbatim passages from them were reproduced without citation. In other cases, identical or nearly identical passages from published scholars who were never referenced as sources at all were included in the dissertation, Schachenmayr showed.

Schachenmayr also suggested that Robson might have used a plagiaristic technique called the “pawn sacrifice,” in order to avoid detection of plagiarism.

“Citing some sources with apparently great vigilance can be used as a way of distracting the reader from the fact that other passages are not properly cited,” Schachenmayr explained.

Regarding the scholars from whom Schachenmayr reports he seems to have plagiarized, Robson told CNA: “I recognise some of the authors you have quoted and did quote from them.”

Still, he said, “the authors cited can only have been a minor part of what work I did as far as I can remember.”

Robson told CNA that he completed his studies- a doctorate in sacred theology as well as a licentiate in canon law- while he was serving as a spiritual director for seminarians at the Pontifical Scots College, where he was assigned from 1998 to 2006.

He studied during that time “to prevent myself going mad,” the bishop said.

“I have never claimed to be an academic and have not touched any study – I have not had time – since I came home,” he added.

“The studies were never really important to me – simply a means to spending what would have been otherwise an uncomfortable few years in the heat of Rome.”

“My directees were the much more important part of my work,” the bishop added.

Robson is a convert to Catholicism; he became a Catholic in his late teens. The bishop was ordained a priest in 1979, and worked in pastoral ministry, and as secretary to the eventually disgraced Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who resigned from the rights and duties of a cardinal in 2015 amid allegations of predatory sexual behavior toward priests and seminarians. 

Robson was assigned to the Scottish seminary in Rome in 1998.

He told CNA he “had no desire to become a bishop…and yet was appointed in 2012 as an auxiliary bishop and as an Ordinary since 2013.”

After two years as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Robson became Bishop of Dunkeld in January 2014.

The bishop served from 2013-2015 as a member of the McLellan Commission, which studied the Catholic Church in Scotland’s handling of clerical sexual abuse claims and the culture that allowed abuse to occur.

Priests who know Robson described him to CNA as a supporter of his priests, “a Catholic, and a believer.”

The bishop is regarded as an outspoken pro-life advocate and an advocate for Catholic education. In 2019, the bishop launched in his diocese a “Year of Re-Evangelisation” and a formation program for catechists.

That initiative, he said, was inspired by Pope Francis.

“His vision of missionary discipleship is something that really struck me but more than that his manner was so open, especially about making our parishes places of missionary disciples. All we can do now is try,” Robson told the Scottish Catholic Observer in January 2019.

At the bishop’s installation Mass in 2014, he told Catholics that “to build up communion in love means concentrated work, and that can be only done with time and many, many hands to help that.”

“Pastoral work, the work of a shepherd, involves being able to serve the people,” he said.

In addition to leaving a decision about his dissertation in the hands of the Gregorian University, Robson said he will accept any other consequences that might come from the allegation of plagiarism.

“I am sure Francis has far more worrying things to fret about than me. But if he wants my resignation, he may have it freely,” the bishop said.

[…]

Paris, France, Jan 15, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- The French Catholic bishops’ conference permanent council has approved a recommendation to remove references to the sex of parents on baptismal registry forms.

“The increasingly complex situation of families in France makes it extremely difficult to draft Catholic acts, especially regarding baptism,” Bishop Joseph de Metz-Noblat of Langres, president of the French bishops’ conference Council for Canonical Questions, wrote in a letter dated Dec. 13, 2018.

He said, because of complex family situations, chanceries in several dioceses in France had “faced problems of vocabulary.”

According to canon law, he said, “ministers cannot refuse sacraments to persons who opportunely ask for them, while children cannot be held responsible for the situation of their parents.”

As a result, de Metz-Noblat said he had worked with two other commissions to produce a new baptismal registry formula that will require “names and first names of parents or other holders of parental authority,” which he wrote would make “the simple acknowledgment of one’s family situation, without bearing moral judgment on it.” 

The change had now been approved by the bishops’ permanent council, de Metz-Noblat added.

Fr. Claude Barthe, editor of the newsletter Catholic Res Novae, wrote in late December that it is likely that a number of dioceses will ignore the new recommendation. Each bishop in France remains free to exercise control over the baptismal registry form in his diocese.

Fr. Pius Pietrzyk, O.P., chair of the pastoral studies department at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California, told CNA that recommendations from a bishops’ conference are not binding law, and that while a bishop must consider recommendations from the conference as the view of his brother bishops, the recommendations are not binding.

“We sometimes think of a bishop’s conference as a kind of Senate that has legislative power— it does not,” Pietrzyk told CNA.

“It’s simply a pastoral engine for the bishops of a certain area to coordinate their pastoral ministry.”

The Holy See in 2017 addressed how the baptisms of children of same-sex couples should be recorded in a letter from Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, then the prefect of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.

“In the current Code, there is not a specific law with respect to the entry of same sex couples or ‘transgendered persons’ as parents on the baptismal record. The term ‘parents’ used by the Church’s Canon 877 clearly refers to the father and mother, the man and the woman created by God who are united in the sacrament of marriage.”

“The entry of same sex couples or ‘transgendered persons’  as parents would be contrary to the aforementioned canon and the teaching of Our Lord and of the Church on marriage as God desires it as the union between a man and a woman. If one of the partners is the natural father or mother of the child, it must be mentioned on the record, the other partner cannot be entered,” Coccopalmerio added.

“Given the foregoing instructions, we do not consider it possible to enter on the baptismal record two mothers or two fathers or a ‘transgendered father’ whose real nature is a woman or a ‘transgendered mother’ whose true nature is a man,” the letter concluded.

Marriage and child adoption for same-sex couples were legalized in France in May 2013.

Barthe wrote that Bishop de Metz-Noblat had been involved in the process of revising the Church’s baptismal documents since that year, and in Feb. 2019 had written a letter reassuring his fellow bishops that the changes ought to be made to avoid accusations of “discrimination.”

[…]

London, England, Jan 14, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- U.K. Minister of Defense Johnny Mercer has issued an apology to lesbian, gay, and bisexual servicemembers who were reportedly outed by military chaplains. He issued the apology at an event recognizing the anniversary of the repeal of the United Kingdom’s ban on homosexual members of the military.

“Our policy regarding LGB members in the military was unacceptable then, and as a defense minister, I personally apologize for those experiences,” said Mercer at an event held Jan. 9 and again in a statement to CNA Jan. 14. 

“Pastoral encounters between service chaplains and personnel should be strictly confidential.”

LGBT campaigners have alleged that over a period of years Catholic military chaplains, as well as Church of England chaplains, regularly violated the seal of confession and informed military superiors of the identities of lesbian, gay, or bisexual members of the military. These servicemembers were then discharged as homosexuality was not permitted in the military until January 2000. 

LGBT activist Edmund Hall, a former Royal Navy sub-lieutenant, claims that he has spoken to over 100 self-identified lesbian, gay, and bisexual members of the military who were dismissed due to their sexuality. 

Hall told The Sunday Times Jan. 12 that while these former servicemembers “were dismissed in all sorts of circumstances,” confessing homosexual behavior to chaplains “was certainly one of those circumstances.”

Elaine Chambers, who co-founded a group advocating for the inclusion of homosexual men and women in the military, told The Sunday Times saying that it was “absolutely shocking” that priests “used to break the rules of the confessional.”

“[Our members] told somebody, thinking, ‘I am just getting it off my chest,’ and the next thing you know, that has led to the military police knocking on your door and that could only have come from the padres,” she said.

Breaking the sacramental seal of confession is a grave crime in the Catholic Church, and incurs a latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication. Priests are expected to keep the secrets of their penitents confidential, even if the penitent confesses to a serious crime or treason. 

Patrick Lyster-Todd, another “gay rights” activist, told The Sunday Times that a letter was allegedly sent by Cardinal Basil Hume, then Archbishop of Westminster and head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, to military chaplains in 1994. This letter allegedly emphasized that the seal of confession was sacrosanct and could not be violated.

Lyster-Todd claimed that once this letter was written, the outings stopped.

A secretary for the Catholic Bishopric of the Armed Forces for the U.K. told CNA Jan. 14 that it could not comment on that claim, because officials are checking archives in an attempt to locate any such letter, and then confirm what specifically was written, and to whom it was addressed.

“Knowledge of the information is for the priest, the penitent and God,” Bishop Paul Mason of the Armed Forces said to The Sunday Times.

“Information gained in the context of sacramental confession may not be used in any other forum.”

CNA contacted the Archdiocese of Westminster and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales for comment on the allegations of violation of the seal, and to confirm the alleged letter from Cardinal Hume, but has not yet received a response.

Hall stated that the Ministry of Defense instructed the chaplains to put military efficiency above their spiritual duties. 

“Would you expect a chaplain to withhold the fact that someone was giving away their location to a Russian submarine? At the time, the [Ministry of Defense’]s view was that homosexuality was in the same category–that it would damage the efficacy of the units,” he told The Times.

While Hall suggested that a priest would be obliged to report acts of espionage confessed to him, Church law admits no exception to the secrecy of the confessional.

In 2001, former FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested and pled guilty to 15 counts of espionage. Hanssen, a practicing Catholic, repeatedly confessed his crimes to a priest, who did not report what he did to the authorities. 

Conversations that occur outside of the context of a sacramental confession, even if they occur in the context of counseling or mentorship, do not fall under the seal of confession. If a servicemember went to a chaplain seeking advice and revealed, inadvertently or purposefully, a same-sex relationship, the chaplain would not be bound to keep that a secret as though it were made in confession. 

Despite focus on sacramental confession in the allegations of LGB activists, Hall’s comments to the press are actually ambiguous as to whether priests may, in fact, have violated the seal of confession. Some remarks from Hall suggest that the context of “confessions” may have been pastoral or other guidance, but not sacramental confession.

He said that chaplains were “welfare officers” who heard “issues of a highly personal nature” about a person’s marriage, family, and faith life, but did not offer specific allegations concerning violations of the sacramental seal.

“What was more damaging was not any particular case where it may or may not have happened,” said Hall. “It was the fact that the threat of it happening removes the key pastoral support option for people going through the toughest time of their life. Because you knew you couldn’t talk to a chaplain, so who the hell could you talk to?”

[…]