How Scandalous Pastors Demolish Private Confession
How clerical failure, weak enforcement mechanisms, and theological complacency combine to turn private confession from a protected pastoral practice into a high-risk moral and reputational liability.
When a pastor gets booted from ministry for being disreputable, there is a poorly considered consequence. What happens to the seal of confession when the man is no longer under the church’s authority?
Ethically and morally, a departed or ex-pastor remains bound to uphold the seal of confession. However, that becomes mostly academic. The only recourse a parishioner might have is to sue a former pastor who spills secrets shared in private confession. That, in itself, is implausible because of the Streisand Effect and the prohibitive costs of litigation.
If a defrocked man has nothing left to lose, say, facing a long prison sentence and bearing a well-calloused and desensitized conscience, there is really nothing to restrain him. In that state, a man may welcome being no longer accountable to God this side of eternity, the Church, or anyone else. Setting aside office and conscience, he may finally rationalize handing himself over to full self-destruction, but not before he takes others with him by releasing what was entrusted to him in confidence.
Consequently, when a parishioner weighs private confession, he has to think seriously about the romanticized version versus the reality. What happens if your pastor, with 30 years of faithful and unblemished service to the church, turns out to be a total degenerate? You’ve told him sensitive and painful personal things, and now he’s a walking spiritual and relational wrecking ball.
Several years ago, a Lutheran attorney told me it would be ludicrous for anyone to make an incriminating statement during a private confession. I thought he was being a drama queen, but after recent events, he has a point. Who is the real man across from you?
This is why it is so critical for Church bodies to get their houses in order. If they are going to be centralized and hierarchical, then they are, by default, accepting responsibility not to send wolves to devour the sheep. For Missouri Synod Lutherans, it means grappling with pervasive antinomianism and universalism. The central problem is not doubt, but sin.
I appreciate this concern. But I am afraid that this post can have the spiritual effect of simply increasing fear of private confession. I don't know what the institutional solution is, but in the spirit of offering solutions, we also need to provide some comfort.
Part of the freedom of private confession is also that because you know what God says about your sins that you don't care what man can do against you.
So I'll absolutely do due diligence to hopefully not confess my sins to a slimeball, but if he speaks of my sins again and it hurts me in this life, so what? What can man do to me? I have the very word of the Judge of the universe.
I wholeheartedly agree. This is why the ordination vows have the ordinand promised to adorn the Office with a holy life. The standards for clergy conduct exceed that of the ordinary member for the very reasons you cite. When the Office is dragged into disrepute because of the conduct of its ministers, the whole body of Christ suffers.
I would also add to moral failings such things as pastors trafficking in gossip, using people as sermon illustrations (“I talked with a guy who….”), and being too chatty about members of the congregation and their personal lives. Not everything falls under the seal of the confessional, but it is sacrosanct and must be closely guarded. This is why breaking the seal will result in expulsion from the ministry even if it is demanded by government.
This also determines how private confession is practiced. It should be done in the open and follow a strict liturgical rite of the church’s Agenda so as to distinguish it from ordinary conversation. Pastors and penitents should never be left alone in church.