Catholic Confession Case: Baton Rouge Diocese asks U.S. Supreme Court for Review

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The Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a ruling by the state Supreme Court it says threatens the confidentiality of religious confessions. 

The Louisiana Supreme Court's ruling, rendered in May, laid out arguments that priests should be subject to mandatory reporting laws regarding abuse of minors if the person who makes the confession waives confidentiality. Normally, priests are exempt as mandatory reporters in the setting of confessions. The decision by the state's high court stated confidentially is intended to protect the person who made the confessions, not the person who receives them.

"The Louisiana Supreme Court's ruling strikes a very hard blow against religious freedom," said the diocese in a press release sent Thursday (Sept. 4). 

The original case involves a minor girl who alleges she confessed during the sacrament of Reconciliation to Baton Rouge priest Father George Bayhi that a fellow church parishioner had molested her. 

Rebecca Mayeux, who was a minor at the time of the alleged confessions, said in an interview to WBRZ in July, at age 20, that Bayhi told her to "take care of it." 

The Mayeux family has sued the priest and diocese for damages, claiming they were negligent in allowing the alleged abuse to continue and should have reported it to authorities. The suit also names the estate of the man Mayeux says molested her, who died in 2009, as a defendant.

The court's ruling did not decide the case but ordered it returned to the district level for a hearing to let both sides present evidence about the nature of the confessions. The hearing would decide if the communications between Mayeux and Bayhi should be considered religious confessions and/or explore the content of what was allegedly said. 

The diocese's latest petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, filed Aug. 24, argues case law from Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese v. Milivojevich makes clear that "religious controversies are not the proper subject of civil court inquiry."

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The hearing proposed by Louisiana Supreme Court would violate the church's constitutional protection afforded by the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, to abide by its own laws, it concludes. Moreover, the diocese noted in a press release sent Thursday (Sept. 4) that the "Catholic Church requires that priests keep all that is learned during the Sacrament of Reconciliation absolutely confidential under penalty of excommunication."

Mayeux's allegations have already been expressed publicly, and if they were to go to trial as the state's high court has ordered, Father Bayhi and the diocese would be "utterly unable to defend themselves," the release says, unless Bayhi violate his vows. 

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