Danny Masterson asks for trial delay because of Rick Caruso's anti-Scientology ads

[onceuponatime]

You are correct. Canon Law completely forbids it

Code of Canon Law - Book IV - Function of the Church Liber (Cann. 959-997)

Code of Canon Law - Book IV - Function of the Church Liber - IV. De Ecclesiae munere sanctificandi (Cann. 959-997)

www.vatican.va

And this has been recognized by US law for a long time

Breaking Faith – Mark David Hall

Religious liberty is not a trump card that wins every time, but interference with clergy-penitent privilege will do no good and may produce real harm.

lawliberty.org

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BUT (and this is a critical part) this applies when the priest is forbidden to reveal the info to anyone under any circumstances. Not even if the penitent has left the Church. Not even if he is now excommunicated. Not even if the penitent is now an avowed and open enemy of the Church.

The big, gaping, hole in this for Scientology is that they routinely violate their own confidentiality doctrine when it suits them, notably in SP Declare orders, or otherwise when they wish to disaffect people from the target.

I know a woman, offloaded from the Sea Org, whose husband was induced to leave her and remain in the SO, by revealing to him certain items from her past from her session info.

This greatly weakens any assertion of "sacredness" on their part.

Yes, Scientology's handling of "confidential" and "priest/penitent" information is terrible. The idea that the information is kept confidential is a joke, anyone who has been around Scientology knows that they will use session data however they want and that tons of people have access to it.

In the catholic church doctrine, there is mandatory internal escalation of some crimes. I do not know the full list, but murder for sure is one of them. If a dudette confesses to murder to a parish priest, that priest cannot do anything himself when murder is involved, not even absolve sins. He is doctrinaly obliged to go to his bishop, tell him what happened and then the bishop will decide what to do next.
That's still under priest-penitent, even if the bishop further "escalates" the case to the apostolic nuncio, the arch-bishop or whoever else above him in the church hierarchy.

But if said parish priest would just go and tell his fellow parish priest? That'd be a violation of the priest/penitent clause.

Sure, and that would be fine, the Scientology version would be sending a folder to an upper org or getting the Senior C/S to review it. Or in the case of crimes getting HCO/OSA involved, but even then I think they have to be careful about it. Well, they should be careful about it but they aren't. When you start publishing session data in ethics issues, etc. it's hard to still call it confidential. On top of that you have the fact that there are way too many people who have access to folders, session data is not kept between the PC and the Auditor, ultimately hundreds of people have access.

I wonder if Scientology has changed any of their internal processes/procedures as a result of some of the more recent legal stuff. Maybe making some attempt to lock down access to folders/session data. Of course they'd never admit they made any changes, but I wouldn't be shocked if they did.

 

[Karakorum]

Yes, Scientology's handling of "confidential" and "priest/penitent" information is terrible. The idea that the information is kept confidential is a joke, anyone who has been around Scientology knows that they will use session data however they want and that tons of people have access to it.

Yep. The amount of people who get access to the confessionals and the transcripts is large, especially if an OSA or ethics investigation is ongoing.

Sure, and that would be fine, the Scientology version would be sending a folder to an upper org or getting the Senior C/S to review it. Or in the case of crimes getting HCO/OSA involved, but even then I think they have to be careful about it

In most cases they would not need to send it up. Continental ethics has direct access to the archives, mainframe and worst case scenario to the guys at ADU. They get the info without the need to talk with the local orgs at all.