The Catholic Church has issued a warning to its clergy in Washington state: Any priest who complies with a new law requiring the reporting of child abuse confessions to authorities will be excommunicated.
https://www.newsweek.com/catholic-church-excommunicate-priests-following-new-us-state-law-2069039
Sinners should be allowed to confess, but not be absolved of consequence or even just be allowed to continue.
If things worked the way they should you don’t just confess your sin and go about your day. The priest assigns a penance. We are at the edge of my knowledge, and I would love for a Catholic to chime in, but I know penance can be harsh, especially for a grave sin. I’m not sure how it works in practice.
The idea is certainly not to just allow it to continue. Here we get to obvious failings of the Catholic Church. But, honestly, it’s not like the government is that great about protecting children from powerful men either.
Confession is for stuff you’ve done, not are going to do. Presumably they recognize it was wrong or they wouldn’t go to confession about it.
I agree it sucks, but I also agree with the comment above yours. Yes, this crime is bad and the people deserve to be caught. I don’t trust the state to always do the right thing though. If we agree with this, we should also agree when they do the same for petty theft, assisting with an illegal abortion, or whatever other crimes they want. This is a slippery slope (not the fallacy) to the state removing protections of any confession, and these people believe if they don’t confess they’ll go to hell, regardless of if they’ll never do it again or if it wasn’t that significant.