T
Tygo
Guest
I’ve been feeling super guilty about this for a long time now. A year ago, for about two weeks I would watch homosexual pornography almost every day until I finally found the strength to stop. Several months later, I was at a retreat with my youth group, and we had confession, but because there were a lot of people there, the priest asked me to tell him the two sins I struggle most with, so I told him. But lust or more specifically watching pornography was not one of the two I chose to confess because it was only for those two weeks that I really struggled a lot with lust and I had two other general sins I felt were more important to confess. Then, when lent came around, I went to confession again, but this time at my parish where I had time to confess all my sins. In that confession, I told the priest that I struggled with lust because that is in fact a sin I struggle with, and the pornography I had watched during those two weeks was definitely on my mind, but I didn’t mention it specifically because, again, I had already been to confession previously at my retreat. Well now, two confessions later, I still haven’t mentioned those two weeks specifically, I’ve only mentioned lust, which, again, I mentioned in the second confession. But I still feel really guilty about it, even though I haven’t watched any type of pornography since, and even though theoretically I should have already been forgiven of that sin. I read something recently about how it’s bad to hang on to the guilt of previously confessed sins because it’s giving them more attention than they deserve, but I technically haven’t directly or specifically confessed this sin, all I’ve done is, again, mention lust, and, again, that was in a different confession all together from the one in which I would have normally directly confessed this sin. So now I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I just need to work on forgiving myself and letting go of my guilt or if I really do need to specifically confess this sin. And if I do need to specifically confess this sin in my next confession, I don’t know how specific I have to be. Is just mentioning lust or the entertaining of impure thoughts specific enough? Do I have to mention the viewing of pornography specifically, and if so, do I have to mention that it was homosexual pornography? And in asking that, I don’t know if the only reason I haven’t just decided to confess this directly is because of the homosexual nature of the sin and I’m just too ashamed. Thank you for your help, I’ve really been struggling over what I should do for a long time and would greatly appreciate any support.