Not privileged. . .

When Washington state Gov. Mike Ferguson signed a controversial bill into law last week making reporting of child abuse mandatory, it went one step further than ever before.  Now, "mandatory" leaves no room for clergy and the seal of the confessional.  The state has required reporting of child abuse leaving no exemptions even for information disclosed during private confession. Confessions had been considered privileged and therefore exempt from the requirement and still are nearly everywhere else.  Confession, like attorney client privilege, has always been carved out an exception to such reporting requirements.  Now that exception has been closed.  Though this is certainly an issue for Roman Catholic clergy, it is no less an issue for Lutherans.  We have always observed and honored the seal of the confessional and the governments reach has always stopped at this point -- deeming it as encroaching up the separation of church and state.  One of the consequences of the breaching of the wall is not simply the influence of religion upon government but government upon religion.  This will undoubtedly be overturned by the Supreme Court of the nation as a violation of the constitutional restriction against laws that infringe upon religious freedom but the signal is pretty clear.  In a world in which there is no respect left for religion, there will be no popular support of the rights of religious against the backdrop of the heinous crimes of child abuse.  In this case, no one wins.  While some may point to the $5,000 fine for not abiding by this intrusion, the money is the smaller issue here.

Some years ago the local county jail instituted video visits -- even for lawyers meeting their incarcerated clients.  I was asked by a member to come to the jail and was given a small closet and a screen but I quickly surmised that this was in no way going to be a visit in which any confidence could be guaranteed.  I warned the member upfront of this and suggested that others might be listening.  After the visit, I waited to be let out and could hear lawyers in their closets talking with clients and knew that walls had ears -- even if they were intended to be soundproof.  It effectively prevent much of any meaningful conversation and pastoral care.  Later I asked other lawyers and clergy about their experience and they shrugged their shoulders.  "It is what it is," they said.  The guarantees of our liberty are only as solid as the ways in which that liberty is exercised or prevented.  In this case, it did not amount to much.

Surely we all get it.  We live in an age in which Dateline and Snapped teach us that things are not what they seem and of cop and courtroom dramas in which the guilty too often are able to beat the system.  Then we watch the news of egregious crimes committed on video for the world to see but the media carefully calling the guilty the "accused" -- as if we could unsee what we saw.  The world begs for justice in a system that will render a verdict after too many years have passed that probably will not have much to do with actual guilt or innocence, and a punishment assigned that will be set aside because jails and prisons are crowded and the enlightened have decided that everyone deserves another chance.  So we are gravely tempted to forego the provisions which provide a small modicum of privacy and privilege to such seemingly irrelevant things as religion.  But in our haste we find ourselves in grave peril.  The world which no longer has respect for privacy for religious purpose will no longer respect any privacy and in that world religion will suffer but so will freedom.  I am a nobody with a relatively transparent life but it still makes me uneasy to think that my life is an open book for anyone with a screen.  If we are not ready to honor the confidentiality of the confessional, we should not complain when all the details of our lives are published in social media and sourced for scammers who are working to profit at our expense.  

Washington's governor and legislature may be well-intentioned but they are wrong.  The sooner we realize that such protections are not infringements upon our freedom but the pure exercise of liberty the sooner we may get some semblance of order back for us and all our institutions.  Governments are not our masters but our servants.