The seal of confession is close to absolute in Catholic canon law: a priest who directly violates it is automatically excommunicated, and the penalty is reserved to the Pope. This has produced genuine conflicts with civil law, most sharply in Australia and parts of the United States where mandatory reporting statutes have tried to reach it, and priests have gone to prison rather than testify. The Eastern practice looks different in the room — often standing beside the priest facing an icon, with the priest positioned as a witness rather than a judge — and the theology of who forgives differs accordingly. The Reformation abolished the office as a sacrament while keeping the counsel; what most Protestants have instead is a pastor, a friend, or nobody. Rates of use in the Catholic world collapsed after the 1960s and have never recovered, a change the church itself describes as a crisis.