[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Portuguese podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Today's episode is going to be a little bit shorter than the typical episode, but it is a very important topic nonetheless.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes stories like the one I'm going to cover today get lost in the new cycle or on social media, they get posted and then forgotten about quickly after, but this story in particular is very important.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it relates to a previous piece of coverage that I did here on the show just a couple of months ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you've been listening to the show for a while now, you probably remember that on March eleventh, two thousand and twenty-five, I sat down with Washington State Senator Noelle Frame to talk about her proposed bill SB fifty three seventy five.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our conversation took place just mere days before SB fifty three seventy five was scheduled for a hearing.
[SPEAKER_01]: If passed, it was going to require clergy and Washington to report suspected child abuse even when disclosed during confession.
[SPEAKER_01]: The bill stirred up fierce opposition from faith leaders.
[SPEAKER_01]: Frank R. Schuster, for example, who is an auxiliary bishop for the archdiocese of Seattle, spoke out against it saying, the right of penance is the term right indicates is a liturgy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an act of worship.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: For us, the sealic confession is essential to the right because the penitent has the right to confess their sins without worrying their sins will become public.
[SPEAKER_00]: The penalty for breaking that sealist's excommunication
[SPEAKER_01]: That quote was not too surprising, because worrying about maintaining the privacy of abusers at the expense of victims is nothing new for the Catholic Church.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you think I'm going a bit too far saying that, then I have the bill bar quote just for you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't you think the Catholic Church went a little too far?
[SPEAKER_03]: No, this is a morning show.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can't bring up all those crimes.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what?
[SPEAKER_03]: Technically, they just sort of kept moving them around.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like those killer whales, it's SeaWorld, after it kills a trainer, they'll then move it up to Seattle.
[SPEAKER_03]: They don't give them their background.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am not totally following, but I don't know what I'm talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as much as church leaders like Schuster want to argue, otherwise Senator Frames said this fight isn't about them in the slightest.
[SPEAKER_04]: We are focused very specifically just on the safety of the child.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of completion of issues here, and I think when you really get down to it, it's just about protecting kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: When SB fifty three seventy five passed with bipartisan support shortly after interview, I felt something that I don't feel often doing this show.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hope and optimism.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mr. Speaker, there are sixty four years, thirty one days, three excused.
[SPEAKER_01]: Having received the Constitutional Majority, Senate Bill fifty three seventy five is declared past.
[SPEAKER_01]: But now, it looks like everything could fall apart.
[SPEAKER_01]: Several days ago, Rolling Stone reported that the Archdiocese of Seattle, along with the diocese of Yakima and Spokane, filed a federal lawsuit, claiming the new law was at punch thrown straight at the Catholic Church, that it forces priest to choose between obeying the state or violating a core religious duty.
[SPEAKER_01]: On June twenty-third, Trump's justice department, spearheaded by Attorney General Pam Bondi, has labeled this bill an anti-Catholic law, and is now fighting to stop it.
[SPEAKER_01]: A press release from the DOJ states, quote, the Justice Department announced today that it filed legal action for a complaint in intervention against the state of Washington over its new state law, Senate Bill VIII-Sony V, which violates the free exercise of religion for all Catholics and requires Catholic priests to violate the confidentiality seal of confession.
[SPEAKER_01]: Senate Bill fifty three seventy five requires Catholic priest to violate their vows to uphold the confidentiality seal that accompanies the sacred right of confession, subjecting them to immediate excommunication from the Catholic Church.
[SPEAKER_01]: As the Justice Department's lawsuit explains, the violations imposed by this new law on all practicing members of the Catholic Church, including Catholic priest administering the sacrament in Catholic penitence participating in the right,
[SPEAKER_01]: include deprivations of the free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Laws that explicitly target religious practices such as the sacrament of confession and the Catholic Church have no place in our society, set a system attorney general, Harmeet K. Dylan of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.
[SPEAKER_01]: Senate Bill fifty three seventy five unconstitutionally forces Catholic priests in Washington to choose between their obligations to the Catholic Church and their penitents or face criminal consequences while treating the priest penitent privilege differently than other well-settled privileges.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Justice Department will not sit idly by when states mount attacks on the free exercise of religion.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Department's motion to intervene in ATN versus Ferguson is pending before the U.S.
[SPEAKER_01]: District Court for the Western District of Washington.
[SPEAKER_01]: More information about the Civil Rights Division and the laws it enforces is available at www.justice.gov slash CRT.
[SPEAKER_01]: I echo Alex Ashley's commentary in the Rolling Stone article that says, together the two lawsuits along with the DOJ's involvement have made Washington's law a high stakes legal test.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whether it's promise of ending clergy secrecy and abuse reporting holds or collapses under constitutional challenge, now rest with the court.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for me, someone who has spent years covering clergy abuse and watching patterns of silence and complicity repeat across denominations is hard to put into words how devastating it is to see that glimmer of progress now under threat.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't even begin to express how furious these developments have made me.
[SPEAKER_01]: As I've said numerous times before on this very show, there should be no religious exemptions for abuse.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do want to mention before I end the show that I did reach back out to Senator Frames' office to try to get additional comment, but if not yet, hurt back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for listening this episode of The Prejudice Podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Please do your best to raise awareness about what's happening right now with SB-V-V-V-V-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-
[SPEAKER_01]: What is happening right now is incredibly damaging to survivors, and it represents another egregious overreach of religious institutions, finding excuses not to assist the survivor, but rather to protect the abuser.
[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Eric Scresinski, and I'll see you in a future episode.