Le secret sacramentel à l'épreuve du durcissement de la répression de la pédophilie : proposition de réforme du droit québécois à la lumière du droit français

The traditional relationship between criminal responsibility and sacramental secrecy has given way to a controversial new report. Modernization, the secularization of societies, the need to adapt justice to the growing need of society in security, the implications of members of the clergy in pedophilia scandals, the Church's long silence on these implications and its internal management of these scandals, and finally religious pluralism and religious fundamentalism have all contributed to changing the discourse of state law on Sacramental secret. Formerly the disclosure of sacramental secrecy was subject to prosecution. Today, it is rather the retention of criminal information which is liable to incur the criminal responsibility of the confessor. This new relationship between penal responsibility and sacramental secrecy does not agree with the language of the Catholic Church, for whom sacramental secrecy must remain an absolute right subject to excommunication in case of violation. The controversy is obvious and the search for a compelling solution is imperious. How to solve the enigma of sacramental secrecy in a two-speed society that seeks to conciliate absolute transparency and human dignity: the first calling for the disclosure of information to the detriment of human dignity and the second, retention, to the detriment of the safety of the citizen. The case of sexual assaults committed against minors is the one that, currently, alarm society at the highest level. This issue of sacramental secrecy facing the new legal requirements of denunciation is common to several geographical areas, but the approaches of solutions are not the same. The search for a more conciliatory relationship between the secrecy and criminal responsibility could go through the comparison of several positive rights. The model of French law appears to be less intrusive to the right to freedom of religion of the penitent and the Catholic priest in this case. And it is in light of this law that we propose a reform of the Quebec model whose right to the protection of youth penalizes the sacramental secrecy. It is on the theories of "joint governance" whose transformative accommodation is the corollary, of "legal relevance" and pluralism of cooperation respectively developed by Ayelet Shachar, Santi Romano and Mireille Delmas-Marty, that this thesis is based on modeling a new relationship between the positive law of Quebec and canon law about what is opposed to them. It is an imperative for the Church to preserve the confidence of the penitents who present themselves to the sacrament of penance in order to avoid making the confessor a criminal agent or an informer. But the safety of children in ecclesial communities and their confidence in a Church that protects and defends them is also one. The legal aggiornamento in the Church, based on a safeguarding of the right of the offender, preservation of the right of the Church to its identity, but also and above all on strengthening the right of the victim, is a substantial contribution of the Church to the repression and the fight against the sexual abuse of children and constitutes proof of its good faith.

Keyphrases: Religious norms, Internormativity, Comparative law, Sacramental secrecy, Repression of pedophilia, Freedom to denounce, Obligation to declare, Religious freedom, Priest silence, Best interests of children