An instructive drama has been playing out this year in the labyrinthian bureaucracy of the United Nations, a drama of particular significance to Canadian Christians.

It began with a news dispatch on the new International Criminal Court of Justice. The formation of such a court has been agreed upon in principle by the UN, and various national representatives are now compiling the rules according to which it will function.

Canada, said the news agency, was advancing a plan that would deny clergy the right to refuse testimony on anything they heard in the confessional. That is, priests could be compelled to disclose what they heard, as could pastors of any other religion.

Eventually the story found its way into this magazine and soon thereafter into the National Post. In Ottawa, a Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman vigorously denied it. Canada, he wrote, "has never submitted, formally or informally, any proposals on the subject of privileges, let alone any proposals to revoke priest-penitent privilege."

Ottawa had reason to distance itself from such a proposal. The sacrosanct confidentiality or "seal" of the confessional is of ancient precedence. In the words of the Catholic Encyclopedia, "Regarding the sins revealed to him in sacramental confession, the priest is bound to inviolable secrecy. From this obligation he cannot be excused, either to save his own life or good name, to save the life of another, to further the ends of human justice, or to avert any public calamity. No law can compel him to divulge the sins confessed to him, or any oath that he takes, i.e., as a witness in court."

Ottawa's denial sent the news service tracking back to discover how such a false story had arisen. The following facts then emerged. The question of priest-penitent privilege had been discussed with the Vatican in 1998, and those drafting the court's rules had declared that it would be preserved. However, when the proposed rules were published this year, the protection was not provided in them.

The Vatican protested and at a subsequent meeting the Canadian delegate had given assurance the rules would be redrawn and the protection added. It was left to Canada and France to redraw them. On July 27 this year the redrafted rules were published and the protection still wasn't there. A Vatican representative described himself as "amazed" and called the re-drawn rules "an abomination."

But how then could it be said that "Canada has never submitted, formally or informally, any proposals on the subject," as the Ottawa spokesman asserted? Why, obviously, because priest-penitent privilege isn't mentioned in the proposed rules. However, not to mention it is to do away with it, but Ottawa didn't disclose that.

But would such a cheap, verbal sleight of hand, whose obvious intention would be to misinform, be played by a senior Canadian bureaucrat? Who knows?

As it happens, two people did know. Professor Richard Wilkins of Brigham Young University, who was present at all the discussions drawing up the rules, and Kathryn Balmforth, a civil rights lawyer who is following their development, both agreed that Canada has plainly been opposing the privilege. "It appeared to everyone attending the preparatory commission," Prof. Wilkins said, "that Canada (at the very least) was not in favour of the privilege...In any event, under any view of the facts, Canada was no friend of the privilege."

Where the matter stands now is not clear, though one fact seems evident. Even if the Catholic confessional is in the end protected, there is absolutely no assurance pastors of other faiths will enjoy the same privilege, which is the concern of Prof. Wilkins and Ms. Balmforth.

To Canadians, however, this raises another important question. Why would the government of Canada oppose such a protection given Catholic and other pastors? If Soviet Russia or Red China, avowedly atheist states, had opposed it, that would make sense. But why Canada?

The answer is becoming increasingly clear. There is, deeply entrenched at Ottawa and in the mindset of the Canadian intellectual establishment, a fierce antipathy to Christianity.

Perhaps it could be described more accurately as a firm commitment to the omnipotent, paternal state as ultimately responsible for the well-being of all and as the source of all truth and authority. Through devices like the "child rights movement," it seeks to supplant the family. By a hundred other means it seeks to destroy the churches and Christianity itself. Thus if people feel the need of confession, they should make it to a state social worker, not a priest.

Moreover, that the churches, representing the old order of things, should have a legal right to obstruct the sovereignty of a multi-state instrument like the proposed International Criminal Court of Justice is utterly unacceptable to such a mindset. Therefore pastoral rights must be abolished, by whatever means necessary.

Such, apparently, is the regime under which we now live. BCR

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