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BISMARCK, North Dakota, February 3, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A bill in North Dakota that would have criminalized priests unwilling to report on what they heard during confession and violate the seal of confession under certain circumstances has been withdrawn.

SB2180 sought to amend a state law regarding mandatory reporting of abuse or neglect of children or vulnerable adults. On January 29, Republican state Sen. Jerry Klein moved that the bill be withdrawn. His motion prevailed.

The bill’s intent was to force members of the clergy to report what they heard about abuse or neglect as spiritual advisors. Two passages exempting clergy from mandatory reporting would have been eliminated from the North Dakota Century Code.

One passage states, “A member of the clergy, however, is not required to report such circumstances [child abuse or neglect] if the knowledge or suspicion is derived from information received in the capacity of spiritual adviser.” The other states, “A member of the clergy, however, is not required to report the information [leading to conclusions about abuse or neglect of a vulnerable adult] if the knowledge is derived from information received in the capacity of spiritual adviser.”

Abolishing the religious exemptions could have made Catholic priests vulnerable to criminal prosecution for refusing to violate the seal of confession. Refusing to do so could have led to a 30-day prison sentence or $1,500 fine. However, under canon law, neither a priest nor anyone who overhears a sacramental confession may repeat or use what they have heard under pain of excommunication.

Some priests have died rather than break the seal, including St. John of Nepomuk (Bohemia, 1393), St. Mateo Correa Magallanes (Mexico, 1927), Fr. Felipe Císcar Puig and Fr. Fernando Olmedo Reguera (Spain, 1936).

SB2180 was introduced to the North Dakota legislature on January 11, 2021, by Sens. Judy Lee (R), Kathy Hogan (D), and Curt Kreun (D), and Reps. Mike D. Brandenburg (R) and Mary Schneider (D). It was resisted by both Bishop David Kagan of Bismarck, North Dakota, and Bishop John Folda of Fargo, North Dakota.

On January 20, Kagan wrote a letter to his diocese stating that the bill would “force every Catholic priest to violate the sacred Seal of Confession.” He reminded his flock that no priest can reveal what anyone says to him in Confession or even identify anyone who has confessed to him. Kagan stated that the bill would make the state and not the Catholic Church the “moderator of our faith and our sacramental life.”

He also said it would “impede free exercise of our religious beliefs and practices” and that it was discriminatory in that it still allowed client-attorney privilege.

On January 22, Folda wrote a similar letter, noting that such attempts to criminalize the seal were not new. “For centuries tyrants have attempted to infiltrate the sanctity of the confessional for their own ends, and this is yet another attempt to violate the sacred confidentiality of the Sacrament of Reconciliation,” he stated.

Both bishops asked their flocks to contact their state senators and ask them to vote against the bill.

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PETITION UPDATE (2/23/21) - 

LifeSite has signed on to a Media Research Center (MRC) letter to all 50 state Attorneys General, calling for an investigation into Big Tech.

Google, Facebook, and Twitter have monopolized the industry, and are using their influence to collect user data, suppress content, and silence those who voice ideas and beliefs counter to their own.

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PETITION UPDATE (2/9/21) -

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This is the latest and appalling affront to free speech which is happening to many conservative and Christian organizations.

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PETITION UPDATE (1/26/20) -

Twitter has again locked LifeSiteNews out of two of our accounts on the platform for displaying a message noting that President Joe Biden’s newly named Assistant Secretary of Health “Rachel” Levine is a man.

Both accounts displayed a simple message which read: “Biden names transgender ‘woman’ as Assistant Secretary of Health. ‘Rachel’ Levine is a father of two who divorced his wife in 2013 after 30 years of marriage.” The tweets also included a link to LifeSite’s article Biden names transgender ‘woman’ as Assistant Secretary of Health, and contained part of the opening sentence of that article, “Joe Biden has announced his intention to appoint a gender-confused man” as Assistant Secretary of Health.

For stating biological or Biblical truths, Twitter and Big Tech are trying to shut down conservative voices.

Therefore, it is now more important than ever to consider dumping Twitter, Google (who own YouTube) and Facebook. To be clear: LifeSite is still using Twitter and Big Tech to encourage others to migrate away from these illiberal platforms.

This is not the first time that LifeSiteNews has been censored by Twitter. In December 2019, Twitter indefinitely suspended our account for a tweet that linked to an article on transgender activist Jonathan “Jessica” Yaniv.

At the time, Twitter gave LifeSite the option to delete the tweet and reactivate our account right away. LifeSite remained steadfast that the tweet did not violate any of the company’s “rules and policies,” and sought several appeals with Twitter, while looking into legal action against the company.

And, while LifeSite's account was eventually restored, we must now consider what course of action we will pursue in this case, over and above appealing the ban.

Meanwhile, since taking office on Wednesday last week, Joe Biden has already signed an executive order which will force women’s athletic programs, restrooms, and locker rooms to be open to men. He has also turned back the Trump administration’s policy protecting women’s sports programs in schools.

Last week, LifeSite was banned for two weeks from our YouTube channel, after the site determined that one of our videos about vaccines violated YouTube’s “community guidelines.” We are also in the middle of appealing this ban.

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Twitter just deplatformed President Trump premanently! And, other conservatives, including General Flynn and Sidney Powell, were also summarily deplatformed.

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When you use Twitter or Facebook to communicate, and, or, Google and Amazon to search for something online, these companies can stifle your ability to share your thoughts and opinions and manipulate your search results, threatening your privacy, your freedom of speech, and even our democracy.

Evidence suggests that Twitter and Facebook's 'community guidelines' are selectively enforced against conservatives and Christians, while Google rigs their search algorithms to direct traffic away from conservative and Christian websites, effectively choking traffic to those sites.

Simply put, Twitter, Facebook, Google (who owns YouTube) and Amazon appear to be actively suppressing access to pro-freedom, pro-family and pro-life news and opinion.

Don't contribute to this assault on democracy: Stop using Twitter, Facebook, Google and Amazon as your default social media platforms and search engine! [CLICK HERE to find a good alternative to Google.]

To repeat: a few liberal and completely unaccountable computer programmers in Silicon Valley are dictating what we do and do not see in our Twitter and Facebook feeds, and in our Google searches.

We, here, at LifeSite, also recently had our Twitter account suspended by the company over "misgendering" a man who claims to be a woman.

LifeSite has also experienced a fall-off in Google search-related traffic since the company updated its search algorithms at the beginning of May.

And, since the November election, Twitter and Big Tech appear to have dramatically INCREASED their censorship of conservatives and Christians as the President Trump disputed the results of the election and when evidence of election fraud began to mount.

Now, it seems likely that they are trying to cut-off conservative leaders (like President Trump) from conservatives on the ground, and effectively exclude us from the national conversation.

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The great irony is that, while Twitter, Facebook, Google and Amazon executives talk a lot about maintaining freedom of speech and diversity, in fact, these hypocrites are ATTACKING free speech point-blank!

This kind of manipulation poses a lethal threat to our democracy, but as we see so clearly now, Twitter and Big Tech have shown no hesitation in excluding conservatives and Christians from the public square.

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State Sen. Lee, 78, requested on January 29 that SB2180 be withdrawn, “but not because I have changed my mind about the purpose of this bill, which is, and always has been, to prevent child abuse,” she said.

She believes that because a lack of understanding of its goals, the bill “has become a distraction.”

On January 27, Lee defended the bill on a local radio station, saying that she and her fellow legislators weren’t meaning to “pick on anybody” but just wanted to make sure that everything was being done to keep children from being abused.

Interviewer Scott Hennen gave the senator a spirited lecture about the realities of sacramental confession and of church safeguarding. In response, Lee said there should be a “rational conversation” about the issue, and said that the rights of a child are at least as great as those of people in a confessional. It was clear that the Senator had still not grasped what was so offensive about the bill and that she was unwilling to learn.

“I’m not Catholic. I don’t know anything about confessionals except what I know as a layperson about that,” said Lee, “so I’m not going to get into a discussion with you about what those details might be.”