My co-blogger has already posted about the recent Supreme Court non-decision concerning the supposed secrecy of the confessional seal. I don't mean to pile on too much about this, but it is certainly a blow against the freedom of religion (in general), in in favor of the current kulturkampf against Catholicism in particular. Given that there is supposedly a Catholic majority on the Court, I am surprised that they declined to hear this case--perhaps they think that they are not impartial justices here, but that seems kind of irrelevant: there are no real impartial judges as concerns Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.
Moving forward, it seems to me that the right response by the Church is to insist upon more anonymity in the confessional. Perhaps this can be done by installing (or re-opening) more of the old confessional boxes, which had a screen between penitent and priest. The only tricks would be to disguise the voice of the penitent, and then to have the priest arrive early and stay in the box until late to avoid seeing any person's face by mistake.
Or, there is the Short Circuit approach of confessing via remote controlled proxy (or perhaps be phone?) provided that the callers information is not traceable or recoverable. Maybe a hard-wired "phone" station?
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