The Seal of the Confessional is a Christian doctrine which affirms the special protection and privilege of the words spoken during confession between a penitent (church member) and his or her pastor.
[1] Some of the Nordic churches at the time of the Reformation maintained virtually all aspects of their catholic faith and order, whilst breaking their links with the Pope.
There was a continuing de facto respect for principles such as the Seal of the Confessional, not least because it took the Nordic people a long time to promulgate any ecclesiastical law of their own.
Although the Lutheran Confessions do not make explicit mention of the seal of the confessional, later texts do address this doctrine.
An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism, an expansion of this primary source of Lutheran doctrine widely used for teaching in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, says the following in regards to the Seal of the Confessional: The pastor is pledged not to tell anyone else of sins to him in private confession, for those sins have been removed.