By Fr John Flader
A girl friend recently told me something in secret and I feel that if I don’t tell someone else, harm could come to her or possibly others. Can I tell someone what she told me?
I will first give the general teaching on secrets and then answer your question. By a secret we understand the knowledge of something that ought not be revealed to others. We all know many things, most of which we feel no obligation to keep hidden, but there are some things that, for various reasons, we feel we ought not reveal. These are what we call secrets. Secrets can be divided broadly into three general categories.
First there are what we can call natural secrets. These are things we come to know in the normal course of life but which should not be revealed to others because the knowledge of them could cause harm to someone. For example, we might see someone drunk or we might be aware that a married person is having an affair with someone at our work place.
Then there are secrets that we come to know after an explicit or tacit agreement to observe secrecy. These are sometimes called entrusted secrets. To this category belong professional secrets between professionals and their clients where confidentiality is to be observed. For example, doctors, accountants, lawyers, counsellors, psychologists and many others know that what they hear through their work is to be kept confidential. It is a matter between them and their client.
Another obvious example of an entrusted secret is the secret of the confessional. Priests are under a strict and grave obligation never to reveal to anyone the sins they hear in confession. This is a very serious matter, so much so that the punishment for violating it is automatic excommunication which can be lifted only by the Holy See (cf. Code of Canon Law, Can. 1388 §1).
Apart from these general categories of entrusted secrets there can be individual cases in which an explicit agreement is made not to reveal what is about to be disclosed. That is, before hearing the secret the person promises not to reveal what he or she is about to hear.
The third type of secret is sometimes called the promised secret. Here one promises to keep the secret after hearing it.
In principle there is an obligation to keep all secrets. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “Professional secrets – for example, those of political office holders, soldiers, physicians, and lawyers – or confidential information given under the seal of secrecy must be kept, save in exceptional cases where keeping the secret is bound to cause very grave harm to the one who confided it, to the one who received it or to a third party, and where the very grave harm can be avoided only by divulging the truth” (CCC 2491).
While in your question you have not given any details of what your friend told you in secret, it is easy to imagine cases in which you could reveal to others what you have heard. For example, if your friend said she was using drugs, you would try to dissuade her, but if you saw you were not succeeding you could tell her parents or some other person close to her so that they could help her. Likewise, if she said she was feeling depressed and suicidal you would be right in telling someone close to her. Or if she said she was planning to hurt someone in a serious way, you could inform that person.
There are situations too in which even the law requires people to disclose what they have heard in secret. In many places, for example, if a person comes to know that someone has committed a crime, the person is obliged to report it to the police or they will be guilty themselves of the offence of not reporting a crime. Naturally, the seal of confession takes precedence over all other norms, so that the priest can never divulge for any reason what he has heard in confession.
As regards the natural secret, this too must be kept unless there is a grave reason to make it known. So if one became aware that someone was having an affair, it would be reasonable to inform that person’s spouse so they could take measures to save their marriage.
We should remember too that when others tell us something without asking us to keep it secret, it is often understood by the very nature of the information that it is to be kept confidential.
In summary, we should be careful to keep confidential information confidential and only reveal it when there is a serious reason to do so.
