Opinion ID: 1121536
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: seduction and the failure to provide counseling

Text: The wife's claims are based upon the affair and because the church did not provide marital counseling to help her and her husband after the affair was discovered. Along with the action for alienation of affections this state has abolished the civil action for seduction. 76 O.S. 1991 § 8.1. We are not at liberty to recognize a cause of action by the wife against her minister for engaging in a consensual sexual affair. The plaintiffs finally ask us to declare that a civil court may impose a requirement that a particular denomination should provide marital counseling to its parishioners under certain circumstances or suffer the consequence of civil damages. The type of counseling (or its absence) a particular sect or denomination chooses to select and provide for its adherents in response to a minister having an affair with a parishioner is a matter of ecclesiastical concern, and not within the jurisdiction of a civil court to prescribe. In Fowler v. Bailey, 844 P.2d 141 (Okl. 1992) we explained that civil courts do not possess ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The allegation of a lack of church-provided post-affair marital counseling to its parishioners is not a recognized claim for the civil courts.