Telling confessions: confidentiality in the practice of religion

WHEN, if ever, may or should a professional practitioner reveal a confidential disclosure? This is a question of moral concern that arises in many areas of professional ethics. Those who have access to private information include many individuals, among them physicians, psychiatrists, attorneys, teachers, and business executives; but they also include religious professionals: priests, rabbis, ministers, pastors, and others. Indeed, religious confession may represent the paradigm case of the ethical problems related to confidentiality.