Butler v. Moore, reported in MacNally's Rules of Evidence in 1802, was an Irish case decided by the Master of the Rolls in Ireland, Sir Michael Smith.
Anxious to be able to transmit in a direct line the peerage and the headship of an ancient house, the new Lord Dunboyne appealed to the Pope for a dispensation from his vow of celibacy.
It is said that one day while he was driving along a country road a woman rushed out of a cottage, calling for a priest for someone who lay dangerously ill inside.
To the second question he demurred on the ground that his knowledge (if any) arose from a confidential communication made to him in the exercise of his clerical functions, which the principles of his religion forbade him to disclose, nor was he bound by the law of the land to answer.
This authority was decisively rejected by the President of the High Court of Ireland in 1945 in Cook v Carroll, where he found that a priest has an absolute privilege not to reveal what is said in the confessional.