California restaurant had fake priest hear workers’ confessions, Labor Department says
California restaurant had fake priest hear workers’ confessions, Labor Department says
According to an employee at the restaurant, the supposed priest urged employees to “get the sins out.”
According to an employee at the restaurant, the supposed priest urged employees to “get the sins out.”
Objectively, what is the difference between a "real priest" and a "fake priest?"
sanctioning by some governing religious authority. Like the Catholic church.
alternatively, this guy wasn't a cleric at all and only hired to pretend to be one. from the article it sounds like he was basically a paid actor.
You can send $65 to the Unitarians to get a card that entitles you to officiate weddings and administer rites. I did, and I have. Heck, for a beer I'll listen to your sins and suggest you a few more while I tell you it's OK not to stress about it.
How is that any different? Asking for my atheist friends.
@Flaky_Fish69 what if they're protestant and have no religious authority? i'm guessing the "religious authority" would be "the will of the people"? idk, maybe if the restaurant employees they could command the Priest title onto this guy
And a poor one, at that. They get $2000 each – after lawyer fees? And back wages.
I think in this case, it is because:
- The priest is not associated with any official church
- The priest is intensionally hired by the employer to spy on employees.
I like your rationale.
We've defined Fake Priest. Nice.
I'm an atheist -- but I think there's a real ethical difference between intellectually honest true believing priests, and charlatans/predators who are cynically taking advantage of the trust some people put in the position. And it seems like this article is talking about the latter.
Yeah with the real believers there is no chance for redemption, they’ll always be idiots.
I’ll take the fakes preying on idiots over the idiots themselves any day.
The difference isn’t just that one is Some Guy and one is Some Guy Who Went To Seminary, the difference is that confessions are supposed to be kept confidential (between the person, their priest, and arguably God), not “confidential” (between the person and the priest, who then rats them out to the boss.)
Yeah, a real priest understands that he is expected to die rather than reveal anything he heard in confession, while this guy was passing everything along to the boss.
None, AFAIK.
Confession is covered by confessional privilege under both governmental laws and church law. What you say goes no farther.
But a random guy can tell whomever whatever, and it seems the employer was deliberately trying to get dirt on his employees.
So yes, there is a pretty huge difference.
Huh... so were the employees told that their restaurant was also a church? They're splitting a pool of $70k in damages? What were the damages exactly? "I told a fake priest stuff." That's damages? Sure, there's fraud... but damages? I thought going to confession was free.
Sorry, I guess I have more questions than answers after reading that article.
I think a lot of the money is due to this:
"Investigators said the restaurant denied overtime pay to employees and illegally paid managers from the employee tip pool. The employers threatened employees with retaliation and immigration-related consequences for cooperating with investigators and fired one worker they believed had complained to the Labor Department."