Both the Baltimore Catechism and the Catechism of the Catholic Church do appear to support posts 6, 8, 9, and 11 of this thread ; and it seems it was developed from the Council of Trent.
So I’ll say (just like my username) I stand corrected.
In his book “I CONFESS,The Sacrament of Penance Today” (1972 Ave Maria Press) Fr. Francis J. Buckley, S.J., says that :
“In short, the sacrament of Penance is a rescue operation, by which God frees man from loneliness, isolation, weakness, ignorance, and fear - from the radical sinfulness which lies behind particular sins and is reinforced by the cumulative effect of sins. God saves the sinner from himself and restores him to the Church, where in an atmosphere of security, acceptance, and love man can grow to the full stature of Christ.”
He says the important part of Penance is the movement of the heart from self to selfless and that the sacrament has a special characteristic - its ability to change the dispositions of a penitent.
My point would be there are often mitigating factors which might need to be considered, (any of which could reduce the imputation of guilt) before it could be said that one deliberately held back confessing certain sins. It could even have to do with a confessor; as this short excerpt from Chapt 5 of St. Theresa of Avila’s “Way of Perfection” indicates :
What trouble the devil can make
here and how dearly people have to pay for their miserable worries and concern about
honour! If they consult only one confessor, they think they are acting in the interests of
their Order and for the greater honour of their convent: and that is the way the devil lays
his snares for souls when he can find no other. If the poor sisters ask for another
confessor, they are told that this would mean the complete end of all discipline in the
convent; and, if he is not a priest of their Order, even though he be a saint, they are led
to believe that they would be disgracing their entire Order by consulting him.
Give great praise to God, Daughters, for this liberty that you have, for, though there are not a
great many priests whom you can consult, there are a few, other than your ordinary confessors,
who can give you light upon everything. I beg every superior,26 for the love of the Lord, to
allow a holy liberty here: let the Bishop or Provincial be approached for leave for the
sisters to go from time to time beyond their ordinary confessors and talk about their
souls with persons of learning, especially if the confessors, though good men, have no
learning; for learning is a great help in giving light upon everything. It should be
possible to find a number of people who combine both learning and spirituality, …
I do wonder about the part of confessing **all *the sins again, since, as Catholics, we are not so much bound as encouraged to confess the venial *sins and the teaching is that when one attends the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, with the proper disposition, their venial sins are remitted…it certainly wouldn’t hurt to do it all again and start with a clean slate however.
