Tell Me No Secrets: Sharing, Discipline, and the Clash of Ecclesiastical Abstention and Psychotherapeutic Confidentiality

Abstract

When a client confesses her deepest secret to her therapist, she expects that to be kept confidential. But if that therapist is also her clergyperson, and if church doctrine directs him to reveal her secrets to the entire congregation and he does so — even after the client has left the church — that client has no legal remedy available in the Texas judicial system. In the situation of the client/congregant, when ecclesiastical abstention (a court’s refusal to decide matters of church doctrine) blocks private rights to seek a remedy, the law abandons the harmed person, already in a position of seeking help and whose ultimate trust of a professional licensed therapist has been shattered. Perhaps the government is staying separated from the church, but the church has certainly intruded into the operation of government and into citizens’ expectation of an available civil court remedy when that church commits torts against those private citizens.

This Article examines the trouble that arises when ecclesiastical abstention conflicts with confidentiality rules that therapists are expected to follow; it explains why ecclesiastical abstention should not apply in the above type of situation. Psychotherapeutic confidentiality is integral to the counseling relationship, and although clergypersons who hold counseling licenses may have church doctrine and governing rules to obey, they also have licensing standards to meet — licensing standards that the public expects to be met and that, when they are not met, invade the public’s safety, peace, or order. Not only should courts not apply ecclesiastical abstention, then, licensing boards should use their tools of education and discipline to prevent the situation or, at the very least, to answer when a court system fails to. This article provides that solution for the dual-role dilemma first by demonstrating that ecclesiastical abstention should not apply in this situation, and second by calling for licensing boards to both educate and discipline in matters related to this dual role and breaches of confidentiality. Our secrets are too precious and our privacy is too great to allow a decision to join a church, a decision later revoked, to invade that privacy.

Keywords: ecclesiastical abstention, confidentiality, evidence, therapists