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Secret of confession: "No one can free himself so little from the laws of the Republic!"

2021-10-12T16:03:30.840Z


FIGAROVOX / TRIBUNE - The president of the French Bishops' Conference was received by Gérald Darmanin on Tuesday, October 12, after his remarks on the secrecy of confession. According to Gilles Clavreul, the secrecy of confession cannot prevail over the laws of the Republic, since they recognize it.


Gilles Clavreul is co-founder of Printemps republican and general delegate of the L'Aurore think tank.

He was interministerial delegate for the fight against racism and anti-Semitism from 2015 to 2017.

Was that an unfortunate word, or was it a calculated diversion? By using the words of the journalist who questioned him, Mgr de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the Conference of Bishops of France triggered a controversy around the secrecy of confession which, for a few days, will have put the real motive in the background. of his intervention in front of the press: the publication of the report on sexual violence in the Church, the result of thirty months of titanic work carried out by a commission chaired by Jean-Marc Sauvé.

So let's start with the main thing, that is to say by paying tribute to the considerable and courageous work undertaken under the demanding leadership of the former vice-president of the Council of State, who is not only a great servant of the State, but also a man of strong intellectual stature and a discreet but committed Christian. Now we know. We know the tens, perhaps the hundreds of thousands of damaged lives. We know the extent of violence, abuse, and crime. And above all, we know the abyss of cowardice, complicity, pressure, threats, to stifle the truth. So we know: but who is "us"? The whole question is there now, and it is indeed the problem that poses, beyond one word too many, the attitude of the French episcopate. Because theimmense scandal constituted by decades of ignored, denied or even concealed pedophile crimes, it is not only the "shame" and "the fear" of the Church, and the confusion, quite legitimate and quite understandable, of believers, deceived and cheated by those who have corrupted innocence: it is literally everyone's business, not just clerics. It is therefore an eminently secular matter: it concerns theit concerns theit concerns the

laos

, the indistinct people.

The secrecy of confession can in no case be "superior" to the laws of the Republic, for the good reason that it is recognized by the laws of the Republic: in other words, it cannot be above the law. since it is in the law.

Gilles Clavreul

Is there, in the eyes of Christian morality, a more abominable crime than this? Probably not. But is that all we have to say about it? When I reread the intervention of Mgr de Moulins-Beaufort during the official submission of the Sauvé report, I felt a certain uneasiness. First of all, the subject is cold, clinical, as external to the subject. Beyond this technocratic coldness, everything suggested that the Bishop of Reims wanted to limit the subject to an internal matter, as if it only concerned the Catholic world. And that's the rub ; there that his little sentence on the "

superiority of the secrecy of confession

On the laws of the Republic does not appear only as a communication blunder, but as a stance. Bishop de Moulins-Beaufort, his director of communication and other ecclesiastics have continued to confirm this since. This position can be summed up as follows: pedophilia is a scandal, but it is

our

scandal. And we intend to regulate it as such, according to our own laws. Big mistake.

Legal error, it is obvious but let us recall it anyway. The secrecy of confession can in no case be "superior" to the laws of the Republic, for the good reason that it is recognized by the laws of the Republic: in other words, it cannot be above the law. since it is

in

the law. And as such it is, like all professional secrets, neither general nor absolute; Likewise, its scope cannot be defined by the beneficiary, confessor or confessed, but only by the legislator and the judge. By brandishing the card of the secrecy of confession, Mgr de Moulins-Beaufort forgets just one thing: that there is no right to the card.

Legal error, but above all political, historical and philosophical fault. First, by claiming that the conscience of the priest, in the secrecy of confession, is the best judge of what deserves to be punished, the president of the Conference of Bishops of France seems to have decidedly understood nothing of the major conclusion of the report: namely that it is this primacy granted to the word of the representative of the institution over any other, victim or simple third party, which is at the origin of the structural deployment of sexual assault within the institution. Church. That is the truth that must be looked in the face; and she is not splendid. Then, Mgr de Moulins-Beaufort, and following him several of his counterparts, by initiating a controversy in the controversy afterhe was summoned by the Minister of the Interior, showed both a lack of composure, going as far as indecency when an abbot dared to speak of "persecution", and a complete ignorance of what it means. secularism, by wrongly invoking this republican principle to refute the term "convocation" - as if it were the heart of the matter! To summon is to "call with": there is nothing infamous about this. We convene general assemblies, meetings, men and students who pass an examination: a minister may well summon a bishop without the latter having to feel himself affected in his dignity.by wrongly invoking this republican principle to refute the term "convocation" - as if it were the bottom line! To summon is to "call with": there is nothing infamous about this. We convene general assemblies, meetings, men and students who pass an examination: a minister may well summon a bishop without the latter having to feel himself affected in his dignity.by wrongly invoking this republican principle to refute the term "convocation" - as if it were the bottom line! To summon is to "call with": there is nothing infamous about this. We convene general assemblies, meetings, men and students who pass an examination: a minister may well summon a bishop without the latter having to feel himself affected in his dignity.

Secularism does not only imply, as a certain living-ensemble catechism has claimed for two or three decades, freedom of conscience and the free exercise of worship.

Gilles Clavreul

But since the word is out, in particular by Mgr Valentin, auxiliary bishop of Versailles, a clarification is necessary. Secularism does not only imply, as a certain living-ensemble catechism has claimed for two or three decades, freedom of conscience and the free exercise of worship. Not only does it not create, for ministers of religion, rights superior to those of other citizens - which means that the Minister of the Interior is perfectly justified in asking for explanations from the representative of a religion which makes statements that seem to him to pose a problem with regard to republican principles, as he would do with the president of a hunting association or the leader of a sports club - but it also and above all aims to specify the precise limits,of what is spiritual. Because to say "the spiritual and the temporal are separated" amounts to asking oneself which authority is empowered, in the last resort, to draw the border. Is it enough that a case concerns a priest, or a sacred place, for it to be said to be "spiritual"? We understand that not: but then, who has jurisdiction

in fine

 ? This question marks the beginning of the history of secularism, as Georges de Lagarde so aptly recounts, in

Birth of secularism in the decline of the Middle Ages

.

These were not the main principles that opposed the royal and imperial jurists to the Roman curia, but questions that could not be more pragmatic, such as the right to judge the behavior of ecclesiastics. Rome, relying on Tradition, demanded the "privilege of forum", that is to say the right for men of the Church to escape ordinary jurisdictions to come under canon law. This is what medieval jurists constantly disputed with them, constantly reducing this “privilege” to the point of calling into question its very principle, that is to say the primacy of the law of the Church over civil law. Basically, Bishop de Moulins-Beaufort does nothing other than rekindle this old wick which has long since been extinguished; Mischief,which is the same as that of all spiritual enterprises which today aspire to exert temporal influence to the detriment of republican and democratic laws, consists in doing so in the name of the principles they defend, and in this case in the name of the freedom of conscience and worship enshrined in secularism.

Read also Abbé Pierre Amar: "Why a priest cannot break the secret of confession"

However, these freedoms can neither have for object, nor for effect, to be freed as little as it is from the laws of the Republic, nor to allow anybody to make of them, for oneself or for others, a free interpretation. and a no less personal application.

I am not thinking of usurping your purple;

do not usurp my priesthood

”.

The formula launched by Saint-Jean Chrysostom to the Emperor can be read the other way around: be free of your prayers and your sermons as long as you respect the laws of the Republic.

There is no doubt that, during their meeting, Bishop de Moulins-Beaufort will have shown himself to be as civil with Gérald Darmanin as the representatives of the Church have been towards those of the State since they acquiesced to the principle of secularism. , that is to say for several decades. Still, this mini-pass of arms will have thrown a smokescreen on a mountain of dramas, in a somewhat pathetic and awkward way, in a moment which required more humility and height of view. Not only for the believers, among whom only a small identity minority had to find its account in these rantings; but for all French people, linked or not to the Church but sensitive to its presence in society and its historical role in France, who could onlyto be saddened and shocked by the terrible revelations of the Sauvé report.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-10-12

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