The priest won’t tell. They’ll have to find the guy and ask him.
So if the guy had finished his confession by saying, “Oh, and I held a priest at gunpoint, too,” then we wouldn’t even be hearing about this, I guess?
Was it his assumption that the gun was to help hasten the transfer of the confession from earth to God?
I suggest they start looking in Bruges.
That sounds dangerously recursive:
“…I confess (I confessed (I confessed (I confessed while holding a priest at gunpoint) while holding a priest at gunpoint) while holding a priest at gunpoint)…”
Not only wouldn’t we be hearing about it, the priest would be in the confession booth with him forever.
This is America! Things move so fast here that we don’t even have time to lower our guns for Confession.*
- This is also why so many people shoot themselves in the genitals while urinating.
You know you’re just the rudest man, the rudest man!
If priests weren’t known to be so psychologically stable, I’d say that one claiming that a man who looked very much like the typical depiction of Jesus, with a cross on his arm, held a gun to him while confessing His sins could be a cry for help from a sexually repressed, troubled individual who may have some deep seated issues regarding his choices in life.
But… priests are paragons of virtue and sanity so parish (ha!) the thought.
Bruges? I’m there (here?) right now. I’ll keep an eye out. I’m pretty sure he’s not in this pub.
It still bothers me that if I know about a crime then I can go to jail for doing nothing but if a priest knows about it then they don’t… no equal protection under the law.
He might have. Since the priest won’t say what was confessed, we’ll never know. The priest is only saying what he saw, which is a separate matter from the confession itself.
I know some priests won’t even tell who they’ve seen in confession, but this seems like a good reason.
Perhaps he was afraid he wouldn’t be forgiven?
Still, I think I might doubt the sincerity of absolution delivered at gunpoint…
The seal of confession only runs to sins of which you are actually seeking absolution. If you are in the process of sinning, you likely aren’t covered.
That great movie Calvary a couple years back went to this point, too.
At least he didn’t shoot the priest; there’s that.
I think part of this goes to “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Anyway, you still couldn’t jail a priest for failing to report a crime without first proving he had knowledge of a specific crime.
. . . Ozzy?
That guy looks pretty metal. I bet his confession was he liked Nickleback.
IANAC but I think that guy did it wrong.
