Court Opinion

ID: 9702732
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:22:04.647263+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:40.965075
License: Public Domain

*292NIGRO, Justice,
dissenting.
Because the majority has rewritten the Pennsylvania clergyman statute and restricted its application to spiritual communications, I dissent. The majority’s only explanation for ignoring the statute’s plain language is that other states apply the privilege to spiritual communications. Other state legislatures, however, expressly provided that the clergyman privilege applies only to spiritual communications. The Pennsylvania legislature did not.
The Pennsylvania statute protecting confidential information acquired by clergymen from discovery provides:
No clergyman, priest, rabbi or minister of the gospel of toy regularly established church or religious organization, except clergymen or ministers, who are self-ordained or who are members of religious organizations in which members other than the leader thereof are deemed clergymen or ministers, who while in the course of his duties has acquired information from any person secretly and in confidence shall be compelled, or allowed without consent of such person, to disclose that information in any legal proceeding, trial or investigation before any government unit.
42 Pa.Cons.Stat. § 5943 (1982)(emphasis added). The statute protects from discovery information that a religious leader acquires (1) from any person (2) in confidence (3) while in the course of his duties. It simply does not say that information is protected only when received in the course of a religious leader’s duties as a spiritual advisor.
A religious leader’s duties go well beyond providing spiritual advice. One may turn to a religious leader as a confidant or counsellor or for solace or other ministration. Often a religious leader is the only person one has to talk to. Religious leaders provide marital counselling. In the Catholic church, clergy conduct annulment proceedings where confidences are shared. In some communities, religious institutions fill in gaps in social services that the government is unable to provide. Aside from departing from the statute, allowing disclosure of confidential communications in these settings *293may deter those who need a religious leader’s support from seeking it.
If the legislature only intended to protect spiritual communications, it would have said so like other state legislatures did. See, e.g., N.Y. Civ. Prac. L. & R. § 4505 (McKinney 1996) (statute protects “a confession or confidence made to [a clergyman] in his professional character as spiritual advisor”); Ohio Rev.Code Ann. § 2317.02(C)(Baldwin 1996)(statute protects “a confession made, or any information confidentially communicated, to the clergyman for a religious counseling purpose”). The law in other states, upon which the majority relies, is based upon different statutes. The majority cites no statute similar to Pennsylvania’s statute that applies only to spiritual communications.
Federal cases interpreting the clergyman privilege are also inapposite. In re Grand Jury Investigation, 918 F.2d 374 (3rd Cir.1990), cited by the majority, looks to Proposed Rule of Evidence 506. That rule expressly protects communications in a religious leader’s professional character “as a spiritual advisor.” In addition, the earlier Pennsylvania decisions that the majority cites do not construe the statute. See Hutchison v. Luddy, 414 Pa.Super. 138, 606 A.2d 905 (1992); Commonwealth v. Patterson, 392 Pa.Super. 331, 572 A.2d 1258 (1990); Fahlfeder v. Commonwealth, 80 Pa. Cmwlth. 86, 470 A.2d 1130 (1984). Thus, none of the authorities purportedly supporting the majority’s departure from the statute’s plain language are persuasive.
While the Pennsylvania clergyman statute protects more than just spiritual communications, I do not believe that all of the information in the Diocese’s archives is privileged. Like other privileges, only confidential communications are protected. The Diocese’s documents may contain no confidential communications at all. They may also be partially discoverable if they contain confidential communications along with other information. Thus, while I would find that the Diocese need not produce documents protected by the privilege as *294construed above, it must produce unprivileged documents in its archives that are responsive to the subpoena.
CAPPY, J., joins this dissenting opinion.