
NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
In 1813, Father Anthony Kohlmann, S.J., had a secret. And he wasn’t telling.
Two penitents had entrusted the secret to him during the Sacrament of Confession. When the penitents confessed their crime (receiving stolen goods), they also mentioned the names of the thieves who brought them the goods.
After hearing their confession, Kohlmann made the penitents return the items to their rightful owner. The local magistrate, however, wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to know who stole the goods in the first place. Accordingly, he summoned Kohlmann, then vicar-general of the Diocese of New York, to court and demanded that he reveal the thieves’ names. Kohlmann protested. He couldn’t do that. The seal of the confessional bound him to silence.
For his silence, the magistrate charged the priest with contempt of court.
As word of Kohlmann’s secret leaked out, anti-Catholic New York rose up in protest. To them, the priest’s refusal to cooperate looked like further proof that American democracy and Catholic “superstition” were incompatible. The threat of violence loomed.
To keep the peace, local authorities convinced the magistrate to drop the charges. By then, however, Catholics didn’t want that. They recognized that the inviolability of the confessional in legal proceedings needed to be addressed sooner or later.
It took the Court of General Sessions six days to decide the case, and on June 14, 1813, it delivered its verdict: not guilty.
In a statement issued afterward, New York’s Mayor DeWitt Clinton defended the court, saying:
Although we differ from the witness and his brethren in our religious creed, yet we have no reason to question the purity of their motives, or to impeach their good conduct as citizens. They are protected by the laws and constitution of this country in the full and free exercise of their religion, and this court can never countenance or authorize the application of insult to their faith, or of torture to their consciences.
