Court Opinion

ID: 9650083
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:23:50.96945+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:18.094094
License: Public Domain

CLIFFORD, J.,
concurring.
I join in the majority opinion.
The notion that Justice Jacobs and Judge Bigelow, chairmen of the Committee and Commission respectively that bore their names, did not fully understand the ramifications of the Jacobs Committee Report’s comment that the “penitent * * * has no privilege at all” is a most remarkable one. Neither of those giants of the legal profession ever left any doubt about where he stood on an issue nor did either suffer from an unwillingness or inability to express his position with unmistakable precision; and for them “the penitent * * * has no privilege at all” meant, as it means to me, that the penitent has no privilege at all. Period.
The dissenters’ red herring of the Legislature “depriv[ing] its constituents of the right to confide in their spiritual advisors,” post at 442, 640 A.2d at 835; or of penitents suffering “utter[ ] shock[ ]” at finding that “they have no right to privacy in the confessional,” post at 442, 640 A.2d at 835; or of Legislators declaring that “the sanctity of religious confessions must give way to the needs of the lawsuit," post at 443, 640 A.2d at 835; or of a priest nattering on at a social gathering about the juicy tidbits in a penitent’s confession, post at 441, 640 A.2d at 835, is just that: a fish of reddish hue that diverts one’s focus from the issue before us. Imposing in the priest alone the privilege and the right of waiver does not dilute *434the “right to confide” or cause suffering or destroy sanctity or encourage lurid story-telling. Priests keep the confidences of the confessional not because any secular law gives them a privilege to do so but because their churchly obligation, their religious duty, their priestly function requires it of them. They will of course continue to adhere to that higher law, and no ruling of this Court will have the slightest effect on that solemn obligation. The dereliction of a sorely-misguided priest who chooses to ignore that obligation becomes a matter for the priest’s church, not for the courts. If a problem exists, it is not with the law, it is with the priest.
I agree with the trial court on the issue that is not before us: the person to whom defendant in this case confessed was not a “clergyman, minister or other person or practitioner authorized to perform similar functions” under Evidence Rule 29. Therefore, no matter what one’s view of the privilege, the Evidence Rule has no application to the facts of this case. Moreover, and more to the point, I find it as unthinkable as do the dissenters that a priest to whom a penitent has disclosed, in the sacrament of confession, his or her pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, sloth, lawlessness, immorality, perversion, or lesser misdeeds would for one moment entertain the thought of disclosure to any third person under any circumstances. However, for the occasional priest who might believe that the law—in the form of a subpoena—might trump the dictates of holy orders and require the giving of testimony, the privilege can serve a purpose, or so the Legislature could have concluded.
Finally, if the Court has misperceived the legislative will, small matter in this case (if, as I suspect, the trial court’s ruling that no “priest” is involved is correct). The Legislature can clean up the statute, and we can launder the Evidence Rule accordingly.