A priest is bound by the natural law, the divine law and the law of the Church to keep absolutely secret whatever he hears in Confession. Canon 983 §states, “The sacramental seal in inviolable; therefore, it is a crime for a confessor in any way to betray a penitent by word or in any other manner or for any reason.” As early as 554 the Second Ecumenical Council of Dvin in Sasanian Armenia decreed: “A priest who reveals the confession of the penitents shall be deposed with anathema.” The Fourth Lateran Ecumenical Council (1215) commanded confessors “not to betray the sinner in any manner, whether by word or sign or in any other way,” and decreed that priests guilty of this crime “be deposed from their office, and imprisoned in a monastery for life.” The New Code of Canon Law (Canon 1388 says: “A confessor who directly violates the seal of confession incurs an automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; if he does so only indirectly, he is to be punished in accord with the seriousness of the offense.” There are no exceptions to this law. A priest may not break the seal of Confession, either to save his own life or his own good name, to save the life of another, or to further the aims of justice. This is eminently reasonable, for no criminal would dream of going to Confession, if he knew the confessor were bound to reveal his crime to the State authorities. The civil courts recognize the confessor’s privilege of silence both here and abroad.
No priest has ever violated the seal of the confessional. Some priests have been known, regardless of their sacred oaths, to renounce their priesthood and deny their faith, in order to live sinful lives, or contract sacrilegious marriages; yet never has it been heard that one of them revealed a secret heard in confession.
Historically, only two priests have had to choose between death and the revealing of confessions. Both choose to die. The first of these martyrs was Saint John Nepomucene, chaplain to the emperor Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia. Because of his known piety, he was chosen by the empress Johanna, as her spiritual director. Her piety irritated the violent temper of Wenceslaus. He became so jealous that all her actions, even the most holy aroused fear and suspicion. He resolved to force the priest to tell him whatever the empress declared to him in confession. Rather than repeat what the sinner had revealed in the confessional, on May, 16, 1383, Saint John suffered death by being bound hands and feet, and thrown into the Vitava river.
Saint Jan Sarkander (1576 –1620) was a Polish Roman Catholic priest and pastor of Holleschow, in the diocese of Olmutz, in 1620.
During the Bohemian War (1620). He was the first pastor of a church that had been ruled by Picards[1] for eighty years. For this he was hated, and their hatred increased in proportion to his zeal for the conversion of these heretics, and for the rights of the Catholic Church. When he fell into the hands of his persecutors, and refused to break the seal of the confessional, he was subject to tortures which ended with his death.
Pope Pius IX beatified Sarkander at Saint Peter’s Basilica in 1860 and Pope John Paul II canonized him as a saint in 1995 on his visit to the Czech Republic.
In addition to these two martyrs, we might add the name of Father Henry Garnet, S.J., (1555-1606), In the year 1606, Father Garnet was arrested, and condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered because of his refusal to violate the seal of confession. He walked with firmness and conviction to the scaffold.
The first instance where the Seal of the Confessional came to the fore in the United States was in 1813 with the involvement of Rev. Anthony Kohlmann, S. J. (1771-1824) in the famous confession trial in New York in 1813:
“A Catholic named James Keating had accused a certain Philipps and his wife of receiving goods stolen from himself, and later, suspicion of the theft fell upon two negroes. Before the trial came off, however, Keating announced he had recovered his goods and, upon being questioned, replied that restitution had been made through Father Kohlmann. The latter, thereupon, was subpoenaed to give witness, but respectfully refused to give the name of the culprit, as he had the knowledge only under the seal of confession. The trial came off, however, this time at the request of St. Peter’s trustees, so that the point might be determined. It aroused immense interest, and again Father Kohlmann refused to give witness. Two Protestants, Messrs. Riker and Sampson, had volunteered to be his counsel, and they argued his case with great ability. The judges were De Witt Clinton, the mayor; Josiah Ogden Hoffmann, recorder, and Richard Cunningham and Isaac Douglass as aldermen. The mayor gave the decision. It was a lengthy and full statement of the case for religious liberty and on these grounds and those of the rules for evidence, excused Kohlmann from giving witness where his religion forbade it, and where he would be exposed to infamy, and, in his own conviction, to punishment in a future state. As Bayley remarks, things had come a long way from the bigotry and prejudice of pre-Revolution days. The case had a twofold outcome. One was a law passed in Albany, December 10, 1828, ensuring ministers and priests freedom from disclosing matters known only in a professional capacity, when such silence is imposed by their denomination. The other was a book by Father Kohlmann himself, in which he took advantage of the intense interest aroused, to enlighten non-Catholics on the matter in question, and state convincingly the Church’s doctrine on the Sacrament of Penance. It appeared as an appendix to a review of the whole case by William Sampson, Esq., called “The Catholic Question in America.” It is a complete theological treatise on the sacrament, and is in high regard for its clearness and completeness.”[2]
The ‘seal of confession’ seals sins forever in the heart of the priest, which in turn is sealed forever in the limitless heart of God.
There is a Providence who watches over the seal of confession, and will not permit it to be broken.
St. Anthony of Padua (Fernando Martins de Bulhões; 15 August 1195 – 13 June 1231) offers an interesting commentary on the law laid down by the IV Lateran Council.
“The confession,” he says, “is made in secret; remote from any human knowledge, it is confided to the memory of the priest and protected against all human knowledge by an inviolable seal, in such a manner that if all men on earth knew the sins of him who confessed to you, you must nevertheless cover them by an inviolable silence. They are truly children of the devil, rejected by the living and true God, debarred from the Church Triumphant, cast out of the Church Militant, removed from their ecclesiastical office and handed over to public infamy, who not merely by words—which would be worse than any kind of murder—but also by signs, or in some other manner, secretly or openly, by derision or applause, reveal and expose what has been confessed to them. Nay, I maintain that whosoever reveals the confession made to him, sins more grievously than the traitor Judas, who sold the Son of God, Jesus Christ, to the Jews. I confess to a man not as a man, but as one who holds God’s place. The Lord says in Isaias (24:16): ‘My secret to myself, to me alone.’ And man, made of clay, should he not preserve the secret of confession in the innermost recesses of his heart? Very pertinently, therefore, has it been said that confession must be an uninhabited and inaccessible land, so that no man has access to the secret of confession.’’ The Saint applies Exodus 19:12-13 to the confessors, whom he addresses in these words: “Take heed, therefore, ye confessors, ye priests, that you go not up into the mountain. To go up into the mountain means to reveal the secret of confession. You shall not climb it, neither shall you touch the borders thereof. The borders of the mountain are the circumstances connected with confession, which you may not touch either by word, or sign, or in any other manner whatever. But alas, there are some who indeed fear to go up into the mountain, but do not dread to touch its borders by revealing the circumstances of sins by certain expressions and signs. Let these unfortunate persons hear their condemnation: ‘Every one, saith the Lord, that toucheth the mount, dying he shall die.’ But, O Lord, what a death? The arm of the civil power shall not seize him and hang him like a robber or a murderer; that would be too lenient; but he shall be stoned, i.e., he shall incur the most severe excommunication and eternal damnation. Beast or man shall perish, i.e., the uneducated as well as learned priests, or be it a layman or simple cleric to whom a confession may be made in case of necessity when a priest cannot be had, or be it a priest of the Church, he shall not live because he has gone up into the mountain and touched its borders.”
[1] These sect members lived in a communistic society in accordance with their beliefs, which included rejection of marriage, holding of wives in common, and the abolition of distinctions of rank and fortune.
[2] The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Apr., 1918), pp. 46-47).