Could this cause problems if they claim The Second Coming has already happened?

Context:

Many church doctrines have long suggested that promises and threats from God, of a "day" when he comes to reward and punish, are always near. Many churches suggest the day you say "take the Lord as your personal savior" is such a day, etc..

So in effect? The Second Coming and the Day of the Lord are not entirely future events; we are expected to experience at least significant parts of them, in our own present lives.

Something seems very off here.

on Today, the main radio breakfast news programme. It's normally delivered by a cleric or someone with a religious aspect to their work, and they say something, that may or may not be related to the news, that is related to faith in general (it's usually not specific to their religion, and certainly not theological claims).

Over Christmas/New Year, Today gets well-known people to guest-edit a programme - they get to direct the 'feature' pieces (the programme is 3 hours, so there are several of these). This year, Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web) wanted to have a non-theist Unitarian minister give the Thought for the Day, but he was told the slot, which is managed by the BBC's Religion department, has to have a theist (they used another Unitarian minster, who does believe in God) - so the minister got an alternative slot at 6.45am (oh yeah, lots of people are listening at 6.45am on Dec 26th, a public holiday after a big celebration ...). And the musician PJ Harvey got Rowan Williams to read one of his poems for the main Thought for the Day slot, and Assange to give the piece (link to transcript above) you think is so 'off' (at least this was broadcast later; though, being 2nd Jan, by 8.55am some people would have been back at work).

It seems to me Assange did a fairly good job of giving a message he wanted to, while relating it to religion.

It makes more sense given this context.

Still seems off, though. Do you think the catholic church has been spying on people using confessionals?

It seems a reasonable way to characterise it, though many priests may not have used the extra power it gave them.

For instance, in Franco's Spain, the church used information from the confessional to oppress homosexuals and students. In Italy, such information was routinely used by the police. Are we seeing a pattern here?

Wherever there is a fascist government, the Catholic church cooperated with the PTB. It's a fact of life, and I noticed it a long time ago.

Was during the writing of a book called "Bless me Father....." by Linda Schapiro. There was a section on Franco's spain, during which the business about the local constabulary and the church working hand in hand to control youthful hijinks and adult sin were touched upon by several interviewees. I still have the book, but it's not with me at the moment. Cites from that book will wait until I return home.

A more thorough discussion of the links between the catholic church and fascism is to be found here; http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2086342?uid=3739448&uid=2&uid=3737720&uid=4&sid=21103222666917. Methods of governing are quite similar.

Daily Kos has an interesting take on the birth control fight here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/19/1066389/-Opus-Dei-Neofascism-Within-the-Catholic-Church

About the use of Mussolini by the church to build church property: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/21/vatican-secret-property-empire-mussolini

The Catholic church also helped war criminals to escape to South America. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II_aftermath)
http://www.thetrumpet.com/article/8173.6815.0.0/religion/roman-catholicism/catholic-church-helped-eichmann-escape
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/25/nazis-escaped-on-red-cross-documents

And yes, it is true that priests are supposed to be excommunicated for the offense.

That hasn't always been the case.

I am most familiar with Spain...which is where my education started. In Spain, during the civil war, for instance, confessions were used to catch communists. "I remember clearly the priest asking us in confession if our fathers or their friends were on the right or the left. Going to mass suddenly made you suspicious." (from Bless me, Father, For I Have Sinned) The government of 1933-36 brought the right wing to power, and the CEDA party was there, waiting. And no, it was not the entire church. It was the part of the church that agreed with fascist teachings. However, please note that a few people are enough to change the way that an organization operates. And yes, factions within the church were both extremely liberal and extremely fascist and resistant to change.

Priests are people. The confessional seal is supposed to be inviolate; part of that seal is self-serving; it prevents a priest who has heard, for instance, a confession by a priest of paedophelia, from turning in a colleague. However, if a priest is an idealogue, like most idealogues, his oaths to the church may be forgotten in the need to adhere to that ideology. Nor are those breaches liable to be documented; they tend to rely on oral evidence long after the fact, because those breaches are too volatile to be pointed out at the time, and less likely to be seen by the leadership of the church. Spain was a bloody and vicious mess for decades during the Franco era, and the clergy was involved on both sides of the war.

I believe that, yes, the confessional can be really dangerous, and has been dangerous, under those situations.

Are you referring to this book?



The only other book I see with that title is about sex abuse.

written by a Jew and a lapsed Catholic, and input and edited by moi. And yes, it is anecdotal. However, I believe it to be true for all of that. The kind of chaos that is caused by fascism is the kind of chaos that causes people to do the kind of thing that would normally be unthinkable. That is why the men in the church who already have totalitarian tendencies do things that would be unthinkable in other times. The fact that it is anecdotal adds, in some ways, to its credibility.

The “Carcel Concordatoria” in Zamora during the Franco dictatorship
Nicola Rooney

The ideology of the Franco regime was based on a strict identification between Church and State known as National Catholicism. Under the dictatorship the Church enjoyed a vast array of privileges ... These privileges were confirmed in the 1953 Concordat signed between the Spanish state and the Vatican ... The concept of “National Catholicism” is, however, a contradiction in terms, and the strict identification of the Church with the regime severely compromised its position. By 1953 the cracks were already beginning to show and a section of the clergy was beginning to express its opposition to the Church’s collaboration with the political power. These members of clergy were to play a leading role in the opposition to the dictatorship ... This opposition became more prominent in the 1960s, particularly after the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65, which marked a change in direction for the universal Church in favour of the mutual independence of Church and State, and declared the defence of human rights to be a duty of the Church. The implications for the Spanish situation were obvious and from this point onward there was a growing threat of open confrontation between Church and State ...

Although not all the Catholic clergy had supported General Franco in the Civil War, the regime had managed to exile a significant number of its opponents, thereby giving the illusion of unanimous support from the Church. The patronage rights over Episcopal appointments conceded to Franco by the Vatican also helped ensure a hierarchy loyal to the regime. The 1960s, however, saw the emergence of a new generation of priests that had not participated in the Civil War. Influenced by ideas from countries such as France and Germany, where many of them had studied, and encouraged by the declarations of the Second Vatican Council, these priests began to question the legitimacy of the Franco regime. Impatient with the reluctance of the hierarchy to assert the independence of the Church from the State, as called for in the Council document Gaudium et spes, some members of the clergy began to act independently, removing symbols of the regime from their churches, omitting the prayers for General Franco from religious services and, in some cases, even openly criticising the regime from the pulpit ... Seditious sermons and other actions deemed to be offensive to the government or the military or damaging to the unity of Spain, would not be tolerated and priests accused of these offences would find themselves before a “Tribunal de Orden Público” (TOP). The regime attempted to deter priests from acts of opposition through the imposition of heavy fines, but in many cases priests did not pay and the authorities were forced to resort to other forms of punishment.

The first inmate to be housed in the special prison for priests in Zamora came from the diocese of Bilbao ... From this point onward, priests found guilty of offences were automatically sent to Zamora without the consent of the bishop of the diocese concerned ... Besides Basques, priests from Catalonia, Galicia and Asturias were also imprisoned in Zamora, together with others such as Fr. Mariano Gamo from Madrid, imprisoned for criticising the State of Exception declared by the government in 1968. Fr. Gamo’s case was an interesting one since he had begun his career as a supporter of the Falange, the fascist party that supported the regime. His father had died fighting for Franco and he was viewed by the regime as a promising individual, destined for a position of authority. His contacts with the working classes had caused him to distance himself from the dictatorship, and his case was emblematic of what was happening in a large section of the lower clergy at this time ...

Those serving the longest sentences were the Jesuit priest Francisco García Salve, sentenced to 19 years at the famous Trial 1001 for involvement in the illegal communist-led worker organisation “Commisiones Obreras” (CC OO), and two Basque priests, Jon Etxabe and Julen Kalzada, serving fifty years and twelve years respectively for involvement with ETA. They had been sentenced at the Burgos trial of December 1970. At this trial the regime had once again attempted to use the judicial privileges provided for priests in the Concordat to its own advantage by holding the trial in camera, but its efforts had been thwarted by the bishops of Bilbao and San Sebastián, who demanded a public trial. The presence of foreign journalists meant that the declarations of these two priests, outlining their reasons for supporting ETA and describing how they had been tortured in police custody, were transmitted around the world ...

http://www.tara.tcd.ie/bitstream/2262/23708/1/A%20prison%20for%20priests%20in%20a%20catholic%20state%20the%20caracel%20concordatoria%20in%20Zamora%20during%20the%20Franco%20dictatorship.pdf

Religion, priests, the confessional, churches, were in fact early ways of monitoring people and their actions and opinions. In order in part for (allegedly religious) lords or rulers to control them.

In our own era, these early forms of surveillance and control are likely to be replaced by the infinitely more intimate and effective computerized form of it; in which first businesses and then government increasingly monitor/"profile" everything you do on your computer.

2) The standard account of religion in Sociology, is that it attempts to serve the State; it (mostly, ideally) teaches the people mildness, and obedience.

3) In many early states (Babylon, etc.), the head of state was often a "god";

4) Or a priest/king.

Sigh.... Wasn't it obvious?

Very convincing.

You left out Jack Chick.

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_control

This brief intro begins to confirm that the confessional is part of a typical "guilt-based" society; it makes individuals feel guilty if they do not conform and obey.

2) At the same time, see link to "surveillance." Rulers need spies; informants. To tell them what the people are thinking and doing. In order to quell rebellion. Priests in confessional, explicitly monitor the thoughts - "spiritual health" - of communicants. In the aim of assuring they do not deviate too far, and rebel against the Lord.

3) This indirectly serves the state, often (see "informal control" in Social Power). In the case where the leadership is also the Church, a state church, a head of state who is also head of the church (as say, Henry VIII and the Church of England), then confession leaks information to the state.

Last edited Thu Jan 9, 2014, 04:38 PM - Edit history (1)

Here's one scholarly source that begins to refer to confession as surveillance it seems. By a scholar at BU, on Foucault's notion of confession as part of a "panoptic" surveillance mechanism, for social control.

Looking for more links....

http://nms.sagepub.com/content/5/2/231.short

Another possibly relevant article:

"Frequent observation: sexualities, self-surveillance, confession and the construction of the active patient" by A Pryce


This one looks good: Book review by Nathan Jurgeson in "Surveillance Society," reviewing "Liquid Surveillance" by Bauman et. alia, 2012

Can't do links proper, to lots of these; some are beyond my linking ability or behind pay walls.

Better? R. Crews, "Empire and the confessional state: Isalm and religious politics in nineteenth century Russia," in the Historical Review, 2003 JSTOR. Online?

To keep it focused, I'd like to see any scholarship on systemic and routine surveillance by the state through the confessional. It's an old slander, predating the Know Nothing Party. I'd like to see if it has ever been documented.

www.iub.edu/~cahist/.../Crews_Empire_and_Confessional_State

It's 35 pages. I'll let you know after I read it. I don't want to simply scan it. But so far it appears to deal with the notion in political science of a "confessional state", as in cuius regio, eius religio, rather than violations of the Seal of Confession.

There is no question that religious organizations, when allied with the state, are a ripe source of information and control for the state. I just haven't seen any evidence yet that the confessional booth was a tool.

While in a general way, the church in turn, teaching obedience, served the state.

So far, in my one hour prelim search, no specific reference to specifically, violation of confessional anonymity.

Though the literature on "Indirect" Social Power will seem to confirm that various institutions of the Church, including profession of faith, and LIKELY the confessional, submitted the individual to social (and ultimately state) surveillance and control.

In any case? Note that Julian's own remarks above merely suggested that the Church itself was surveilling; no mention of the state, above. Though the jump from Church control to state seems easy and compelling. Specially in the case of official state churches.

Follow the logic; it's all by logical deduction.

First: 1) the Church asks communicants to confess their sins. In this way 2) the church thus discovers the inner life of the churchgoer. 3) It is next just a matter of semantics, whether you call this spiritual communication, or "surveillance." In either case, an institution is uncovering your inner thoughts.

Seriously, the Seal of Confession is one thing the RCC takes very seriously, no matter what else it may do.

I often think that the last thing capitalism will eliminate before overtakes in this country is the First Amendment. They will smile benignly, allowing you to shout "Fuck you!", while the dogs gnaw on your intestines.

In some ways, the Seal gets that last respect.

The church is thought to be mainly an arm of the State. Or the greater culture. As it peers into your soul, and orders it to do things.

Possibly the Seal is technically supported. But only technically.

Or for that matter? If I remember, a few years ago (five? Seven?) there WAS a serious report of the Seal being violated. Search for it. Maybe confessors reporting murderers or child molesters to authorities?

Here:

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/04/a-case-about-violation-of-the-seal-of-confession-in-the-press/

That's why I try to keep facts in and slander out.

Their very curiosity is testament to their being outliers. The link to the news outlet inside your link is dead. Given the conservative nature of Fr. Zuhlsdorf and his blog, I'll go look to see what happened to them.

In any event, it's a far cry from the systemic use of the confessional for state surveillance.