ICC Note: A federal agency in India has called for the sacrament of Christian confession to be abolished as it could be misused to blackmail and target women. This call comes after a probe concluded its investigation into two cases of sexual assault perpetrated by Catholic priests in Kerala and Punjab. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India has said this is an overreach by the federal probe seeking to use the sexual assaults to diminish religious freedoms for Christians.

07/27/2018 India (UCAN) – An Indian federal agency has proposed abolishing the sacrament of confession on grounds that Christian priests misuse it to blackmail and target women, but church officials believe the plan is unnecessary interference in religious affairs.

The National Commission for Women, a body that protects women’s interests, has also proposed a federal inquiry into two cases of rape and sexual assault involving clergy of two Christian churches in Kerala, media reports said.

“The priests pressure women into telling their secrets and we have one such case in front of us. There must be many more such cases and what we have right now is just a tip of the iceberg,” commission chairwoman Rekha Sharma said.

The commission probed a man’s claim that four priests of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church used the confession secrets of his wife to blackmail and sexually exploit her.

It also investigated a June 29 complaint by a 48-year-old Catholic nun that Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar diocese in Punjab raped her four years ago. She accused the bishop of abusing her 13 more times over the following two years on his visits to Kerala.

Both cases are now under police investigation. The commission constituted an independent panel to probe them and sent its findings to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi and the heads of police departments in Kerala and Punjab.

Indian bishops said the commission’s proposal to scrap confession was unwarranted interference in the affairs of Christians.

“It is none of their business to interfere with the religious matters of Christians,” said Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas, secretary-general of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India.

He said allegations of misuse of confession for sex are “the rarest of the rare” in the church’s history and “generalizing and stigmatizing a whole community for the alleged misdeeds of a few people is totally unfair and uncalled for.”

The regional bishops’ council in Kerala said the proposal has “shocked not only Christians but all those who stand for religious freedom.”

It said the commission acted irresponsibly and with ulterior motives when it made the proposal unilaterally on a subject on which it has no mandate.

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