SAN JOSE - The US Catholic Church's drive for greater transparency after a raft of damaging sex scandals is being taken literally by one California bishop.
He has ordered church confessionals to be equipped with see-through windows.
Bishop Patrick J McGrath of the Diocese of San Jose ordered windows or glass doors put into confessionals and counseling rooms "to have the perception match the fact that people are safe" with church priests, Vicar General Francis Cilia said today.
"This still allows for privacy, it still allows for inaudible confession, the secrecy of what goes on. It just makes it a bit more open. We think it's the prudent thing to do," Cilia said.
McGrath's order will affect hundreds of confessionals and counseling rooms in the diocese's 52 churches and missions, mandating that they be equipped with see-through glass within a year.
Cilia said "old-style" confessionals, in which the priest and the penitent are in adjoining chambers separated by a screen, would not be affected.
The bishop's order, which diocese officials believe to be the first of its kind in the country, follows an historic church summit in June at which US Catholic leaders agreed on new policies to combat the problem of sexual abuse by priests.
While some local Catholics have voiced disquiet over San Jose's new "confessionals with a view", Cilia said the policy would be implemented to ensure maximum confidentiality.
"There is nothing private about saying 'I'm a sinner,"' Cilia said. "It is what you tell the priest when you are in confession that is private."
Cilia also noted that in some European churches confession has long been a much more public process than it has for many US Catholics.
"In St Peter's Basilica in Rome the priest is in an area that is curtained off, while the penitent is kneeling right there in the open," Cilia said.
"This is very much in our tradition. It is just something that we here are not used to."