Priests who sense that you know a sin is serious are naturally not going to heap more guilt onto you, not while you’re in the confessional! It is like going to a doctor: if you seem sufficiently impressed by your malady that you obviously do not want to suffer the same disease or injury again, you are likely to be spared a lecture about how your plight could have been avoided. If anything, doctors try to hide their concern for your condition, in order to let you know they are confident of your cure. It is like that with confessors, too. They also do not want you to dread coming back, should you repeat the sin. They want you to come back as often and for as many times as it takes to leave the sin behind. If they are too stern, you might fear coming to confess the same serious sin again. This would be disasterous, the worst possible outcome!! They want to be the first person you go to with a serious sin, not the last person you want to face!
Priests tend to be far more stern in homilies, since they are presumably talking to at least a few people who aren’t confessing or repenting of the sin in question, who still need to be impressed by the seriousness of the sin. Once those people show up in the same priests’ confessionals, though, the need for a sermon no longer exists. Rather, affection for the sacrament needs to be fostered. Fear of the confessional is the last thing they want to put into you.
