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
I agree - and I would hope any advice given by a priest would cover this - but if it becomes a mandatory thing where does it end. Should priests report abortions in states that have made then illegal? How about sheltering an undocumented immigrant, or any number of things that the current administration might decide they don’t like?
No, and the difference is that reporting pedophilia isn’t a slippery slope to criminalizing human rights. The source of the problem is completely unrelated.