The Confessional Is Not the Cover-Up: Canterbury is reviving a “half-broken seal” its own bishops rejected—and creating a precedent that will be used against Catholic confession
The Church of England’s lead safeguarding bishop says mandatory reporting must take precedence over the seal of confession. Yet the scandals now invoked against the seal arose overwhelmingly outside confession, from actionable information which bishops, clergy and officials failed to report or pursue. Canterbury is proposing to sacrifice a sacred principle for institutional failures that principle did not cause—and, in doing so, to place the Catholic confessional in the public and political dock.
By HE ✠Jerome Lloyd
The Church of England has placed the seal of confession in the dock. Addressing the General Synod in York on 13 July, its lead safeguarding bishop, the Right Reverend Robert Springett, declared that mandatory reporting must take precedence over continued adherence to the seal. He said that the seal was regarded by many as “fatally undermining” the Church’s credibility on safeguarding and that the question could no longer be left in the “too difficult to manage tray”. The House of Bishops is expected to return to the issue in the autumn.¹
No final change has yet been enacted, but the decisive premise has already been conceded: that the seal itself may be an obstacle to the protection of children and that institutional credibility may therefore require its surrender.
This is not merely an internal Anglican argument. In the public forum, confession is confession. The press, Parliament and the wider public will not sustain careful theological distinctions between an Anglican rite and the Catholic Sacrament of Penance. Once the Established Church accepts that confessional secrecy must yield to mandatory reporting, the political question will immediately follow: why should Catholic priests retain what Anglican clergy have relinquished?
Canterbury is therefore deciding more than its own internal discipline. It is helping to define the public meaning of the confessional throughout Britain. If it abandons the seal, it will lend ecclesiastical authority to the proposition that absolute sacramental confidentiality is inherently incompatible with safeguarding. Catholic priests who remain faithful to the seal will increasingly be portrayed not as defending a sacrament, freedom of conscience and the integrity of the internal forum, but as obstructing child protection.
That framing must be challenged before it becomes accepted wisdom, because the confessional is not the cover-up.
The safeguarding scandals which have devastated the credibility of the churches were not principally caused by information becoming trapped inside confession. They were caused by information known outside it and ignored. Victims spoke. Complaints were made. Letters were written. Colleagues became suspicious. Bishops and officials were warned. Files existed. Yet institutions delayed, minimised, concealed, transferred offenders, discouraged complainants or protected their own reputations.
The Makin Review into the abuse perpetrated by John Smyth was not the story of a confession which a priest was forbidden to reveal. It was the story of abuse known within influential Christian circles and of repeated failures to report, investigate and warn. Church officers possessed information upon which they were entirely free to act. The seal prevented nothing. Institutional deference, cowardice and self-protection did.²
To confuse such failures with the sacramental seal is a grave category error. Private episcopal correspondence, personnel discussions, safeguarding files, legal settlements, informal clerical understandings and reputational management all belong to the external forum. They are human arrangements which must yield whenever they conceal danger, suppress evidence or frustrate justice.
The sacramental seal belongs to an altogether different order. It does not exist to protect an institution, preserve clerical reputation or exempt an offender from the ordinary operation of the law. It exists because the confessor receives a sacramental disclosure for one purpose alone: the reconciliation of a soul with God. He may not publish it, exploit it, use it in ecclesiastical government or employ it against the penitent.
The credible defence of the seal therefore begins by stripping away every other form of secrecy through which abuse has actually been concealed. Everything learned outside confession must be recorded, reported and acted upon. No bishop, priest or official should be permitted to disguise institutional silence as pastoral confidentiality. The principle is simple: protect the seal, while abolishing every secrecy falsely masquerading as it.
Nor is the present controversy a new dilemma which earlier authorities were too timid to examine. The Church of England established a working group in 2014 specifically to reconsider the seal in the light of safeguarding failures. It examined the Australian Anglican attempt to introduce exceptions for serious offences and found that the proposal required confessors to make difficult and subjective legal judgements about such matters as “serious offences”, “significant harm” and vulnerable persons during confession.³
The group could not agree whether the seal should ultimately be retained or abolished, but it did agree that a qualified seal was incoherent. Bishop Mark Sowerby, its vice-chairman, told the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse that a “half-broken seal was not a workable compromise”. In May 2019, the House of Bishops expressly concluded that it “did not favour” a qualified exemption and preferred to retain the seal while introducing clearer guidance, better training and diocesan advisers.⁴
The policy now presented as an overdue safeguarding necessity is therefore one which the Church of England’s own bishops have already examined and rejected. They rejected it not because abuse was regarded lightly, but because a conditional seal was found to be confused in principle and unworkable in practice.
The wider question of mandatory reporting has also been examined before. Following a national consultation opened in 2016, the Government concluded in 2018 that the case for either a general mandatory-reporting duty or a statutory duty to act had not then been made. Only 12 per cent of respondents preferred mandatory reporting; 68 per cent believed that such a duty could adversely affect the child-protection system, 66 per cent warned that it might divert attention from the most serious cases, and 85 per cent agreed that reporting alone would not ensure that effective protective action followed.⁵
That consultation did not specifically determine the status of sacramental confession, and subsequent Governments reversed the policy after IICSA recommended a statutory reporting duty. The earlier decision is nonetheless important because it demonstrates that mandatory reporting is not a self-evidently effective measure whose only opponents are indifferent to abuse. Its possible consequences—defensive over-reporting, overwhelmed services, the loss of professional judgement and the reduction of safe spaces for disclosure—were considered serious enough for the Government initially to reject it.
Changing the policy does not make those risks disappear.
The Crime and Policing Act 2026 has now introduced a statutory duty for people undertaking specified regulated activities with children to report sexual abuse when told of it by a child or perpetrator, or when witnessing the abuse themselves. It has also created an offence of deliberately obstructing a person from making a required report.⁶ Yet Bishop Springett has said that confession is not itself a “regulated activity” under that statutory scheme and that the question of the seal therefore remains firmly within the Church of England’s own hands.⁷
That makes the proposal more consequential, not less. Canterbury is not simply submitting reluctantly to an unavoidable statutory command. It is considering voluntarily establishing the principle that sacramental confidentiality should yield where the State has not directly required it to do so.
Once that precedent exists, it will not remain confined to Anglicanism. Campaigners will argue that the Established Church has accepted the moral necessity of breaching confession while the Catholic Church remains intransigent. The words of Anglican safeguarding leaders will be repeated in parliamentary committees, public inquiries and media campaigns as ecclesiastical testimony that an absolute seal is no longer defensible.
The evidential case against confession is also considerably weaker than the public rhetoric suggests. There is limited evidence that some clerical offenders have admitted abuse during confession. IICSA referred to a small Irish study in which a sample of perpetrators reported confessing their offences, and the Australian Royal Commission heard some evidence of similar disclosures.⁸
These cases must not be dismissed. They do not, however, establish that sexual offenders characteristically use confession as a psychological “reset”, relieving guilt before returning to abuse. IICSA recorded that a number of senior Catholic witnesses had never personally encountered a perpetrator confessing child sexual abuse. Its own evidence assessment concluded that confession was likely to be one of the less common ways in which a Church became aware of offending.⁹
The forensic literature does not establish a general cycle of abuse, sacramental confession, emotional relief and renewed abuse. At most, the evidence suggests that something of this kind may have occurred in individual cases. That is a legitimate safeguarding concern; it is not a settled psychological finding and must not be presented as though it were.
Breaking the seal would not necessarily provide the safeguarding benefit its advocates promise. A perpetrator who knows that admitting abuse will automatically generate a police report has a powerful incentive not to confess it. The confessional would not thereby become a dependable source of criminal intelligence. The disclosure would simply be less likely to occur.
The same problem applies to victims. Some victims disclose abuse gradually, uncertainly and with great fear. They may first speak of it in confession precisely because they believe that they remain in control of what happens next. The Church of England’s own working group warned that abolishing the seal might deter victims and survivors from disclosing abuse for fear that the priest would immediately report them to the authorities.¹⁰
The proper pastoral response is not to betray the disclosure, but to help the victim bring it safely into the external forum. A priest should make clear that the abuse was not the victim’s fault, that the victim remains entirely free to speak, and that practical assistance is available. He should encourage the person to repeat the disclosure outside confession and offer help in approaching safeguarding professionals, trusted family members or the police.
The seal binds the confessor. It does not bind the victim.
That distinction is indispensable because abusive priests have sometimes lied about the seal in order to control those whom they harmed. IICSA heard evidence of priests abusing victims, hearing their confessions and then claiming that the matter was “under the seal” and could never be mentioned again. The Inquiry correctly observed that the seal did not prevent the victim from reporting the abuse.¹¹
Such conduct is not a defence of the seal. It is an abuse of spiritual authority and a deliberate falsehood about the seal. An offender cannot place another person’s suffering beneath sacramental secrecy. The penitent’s own confession binds the confessor; it does not confer upon an abuser the power to silence his victim.
The answer is rigorous formation, clear boundaries and severe discipline. Children and vulnerable adults must be taught that they may always disclose anything done to them. No priest should hear the confession of someone whom he has abused, groomed or placed under improper spiritual dependence. Confessionals should protect auditory privacy without providing hidden opportunities for misconduct. Intrusive or sexualised questioning must be prohibited and punished.
The boundaries of the sacrament must also be unmistakable. An ordinary pastoral conversation, spiritual-direction meeting, safeguarding interview or private consultation is not automatically protected by the sacramental seal. An offender cannot begin disclosing abuse outside confession and then retrospectively render the information unusable by announcing that he intended it sacramentally. Information already received in the external forum remains actionable.
A qualified seal, however, creates more difficulties than it resolves. Once exceptions are admitted, the penitent cannot know whether a confession is confidential until the priest has classified its contents. The confessor must become an amateur lawyer, deciding during the sacrament whether particular words satisfy statutory definitions, whether a threat remains current, whether the persons involved are identifiable and whether a reporting threshold has been crossed.
Confession would then cease to be a protected forum of conscience and become a legally conditional interview.
Yet the confessor is not conducting a forensic interview. He has no recorded statement, no caution, no supporting evidence and no opportunity to test the account against witnesses or documents. What he hears may be incomplete, confused, exaggerated, delusional, scrupulous, hearsay or psychologically disturbed. A reporting obligation would nevertheless require him to convert fragmentary sacramental knowledge into an allegation in the external forum.
Preserving the seal does not mean offering an abusing penitent cheap reassurance. Absolution is not a spiritual sedative, still less a licence to continue offending. Catholic teaching requires contrition: sorrow for the sin committed together with a resolution not to sin again. Canon law likewise requires the penitent to reject the sins committed and possess a purpose of amendment.¹²
An offender who intends to continue abusing, retain improper access to children or use confession merely to relieve his own distress is not properly disposed for absolution. A confessor should confront him with the gravity of the crime, insist upon the prevention of further harm, and urge the penitent to remove himself from access to potential victims, seek specialist intervention and repeat the disclosure outside confession. Where there is no sincere purpose of amendment, absolution must be deferred or withheld.
Catholic discipline does not permit surrender to the civil authorities to be imposed mechanically as a condition of absolution. It does, however, require sincere repentance and a firm intention not to repeat the evil. The sacrament cannot be reduced to a revolving door through which an offender repeatedly passes while intending to continue his crimes.
The seal nevertheless remains absolute even when absolution is not given. Catholic canon law declares it inviolable and forbids the confessor both to betray the penitent and to use sacramental knowledge to the penitent’s detriment. The Apostolic Penitentiary has stated expressly that everything admitted in confession remains sealed even where the confession is invalid or absolution is refused.¹³
This is not a loophole by which an offender obtains protection. It is the necessary consequence of the sacramental forum. The priest cannot invite a person to speak under an absolute sacramental obligation of secrecy and then declare that the obligation disappeared because he judged the confession defective.
The formation of confessors must therefore address abuse directly. Priests must be taught how offenders minimise their conduct, transfer blame, manufacture displays of remorse and confuse self-pity with repentance. Emotional distress is not necessarily contrition. A desire to escape guilt is not the same as a firm intention to cease offending.
The seal is entirely compatible with rigorous safeguarding, provided that it is never used as an excuse for passivity outside the sacrament. Every allegation received through any other channel must be reported according to law and safeguarding policy. Every credible risk must be independently assessed. Every cleric who conceals actionable information must face discipline. Every bishop or superior who protects institutional reputation at the expense of victims must be held accountable.
That is where the real safeguarding battle lies.
The seal is not preserved because offenders deserve concealment. It is preserved because the priest has no ownership of what is disclosed sacramentally. He may not betray an offender, but neither may he betray a victim, expose a family secret, repeat an intimate humiliation, exploit a penitent’s vulnerability or use confessional knowledge to protect himself.
The absoluteness of the seal is not principally a privilege conferred upon the clergy. It is a restraint imposed upon them. The priest remains bound when disclosure would be personally advantageous, institutionally convenient or publicly applauded.
Once the State claims authority to establish one exception, pressure for further exceptions will inevitably follow. Child sexual abuse will be the first because it presents the most emotionally compelling case. Terrorism, serious violence, domestic abuse, extremism and other offences will then be proposed. Each exception will appear reasonable when considered alone. Together they would transform the seal from an inviolable sacramental obligation into a temporary permission granted by the State and revocable according to political demand.
The issue therefore concerns more than ecclesiastical confidentiality. It concerns whether any forum of conscience may exist beyond the compulsory reach of government.
Safeguarding children is a grave moral obligation. Children are not protected, however, by symbolic attacks upon a sacred discipline which played little or no part in the institutional failures now invoked against it. They are protected when victims are heard, external information is reported, evidence is preserved, offenders lose access to potential victims and leaders are punished for concealment.
The Church of England’s principal scandals were not caused by priests remaining silent about sacramental confessions. They were caused by churchmen and officials possessing actionable information in the external forum and failing to act.
Breaking the seal would permit an institution to perform decisiveness while avoiding the more difficult work of changing the habits through which abuse was actually enabled: deference, patronage, managerial opacity, institutional cowardice and the protection of reputation.
The House of Bishops should refuse to offer the confessional as a symbolic sacrifice for failures which occurred elsewhere. It should remember that its own earlier working group found a “half-broken seal” unworkable. It should remember that the Government itself once rejected general mandatory reporting after concluding that the evidence had not established its effectiveness and that the risks to the child-protection system were substantial.
Above all, it should make a clear and uncompromising settlement with the public: the seal will remain inviolable, but no other clerical or institutional secrecy will be permitted to masquerade as it.
The confessional did not conceal John Smyth. It did not suppress complaints, neglect warnings, intimidate victims or protect episcopal reputations. Human beings did those things in offices, meetings, correspondence and private conversations where no sacramental prohibition prevented them from speaking.
Canterbury may imagine that it is deciding only the future of an Anglican discipline. In reality, it is shaping the public understanding of every confessional in Britain.
The confessional is not the cover-up. Destroying it will not repair the cover-up. It will merely demonstrate that, when genuine accountability proves difficult, an institution finds it easier to sacrifice the sacred than to discipline those who failed.
¹ Church of England, “Synod Safeguarding Presentation”, 13 July 2026; Donna Birrell, “Bishop calls for mandatory reporting to override seal of the confession”, Premier Christian News, 15 July 2026.
² Keith Makin, Independent Learning Lessons Review: John Smyth QC, November 2024; Church of England, “Independent review into Church’s handling of Smyth case published”, 7 November 2024; “Final report published on response to Makin recommendations”, 23 June 2026.
³ Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, The Anglican Church Investigation Report, Part B.5.3, paras 18–21.
⁴ Ibid., paras 22–23.
⁵ HM Government, Reporting and Acting on Child Abuse and Neglect: Summary of Consultation Responses and Government Action, March 2018, pp. 3–6; “Reporting and acting on child abuse and neglect”, consultation outcome.
⁶ Home Office and Ministry of Justice, “Crime and Policing Act 2026: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse Recommendations Factsheet”, updated 19 May 2026; Crime and Policing Act 2026, Part 5, Chapter 2.
⁷ Church of England, “Synod Safeguarding Presentation”, 13 July 2026; Donna Birrell, “Bishop calls for mandatory reporting to override seal of the confession”, Premier Christian News, 15 July 2026.
⁸ Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, The Roman Catholic Church Investigation Report, Part I.4, para. 21.
⁹ Ibid., paras 22–24.
¹⁰ Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, The Anglican Church Investigation Report, Part B.5.3, para. 24.
¹¹ Ibid., paras 18–19.
¹² Code of Canon Law, canons 959 and 987; Apostolic Penitentiary, “Note on the Importance of the Internal Forum and the Inviolability of the Sacramental Seal”, 29 June 2019, §1.
¹³ Code of Canon Law, canons 983–984; Apostolic Penitentiary, “Note on the Importance of the Internal Forum and the Inviolability of the Sacramental Seal”, 29 June 2019, §1.
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