Is my confession valid?

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DavidSears

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Whenever I sin (or remember a sin I committed), I type down the sin in a secure part of my phone and I take it to confession at the end of the week (I have a bad memory). Now some of the sins I remember that I put in are from before my last confession. So I tell my priest some of these are from after my last confession and some are from before. He said as long as you don’t deliberately omit a sin, your sins are forgiven and do not have to say them. But I said them anyway. Did I invalidate the confession because I disobeyed him? I was reading off my list and I didn’t have time to differientiate between new and old ones…
 
DavidSears said:
Whenever I sin (or remember a sin I committed), I type down the sin in a secure part of my phone and I take it to confession at the end of the week (I have a bad memory). Now some of the sins I remember that I put in are from before my last confession. So I tell my priest some of these are from after my last confession and some are from before. He said as long as you don’t deliberately omit a sin, your sins are forgiven and do not have to say them. But I said them anyway. Did I invalidate the confession because I disobeyed him? I was reading off my list and I didn’t have time to differientiate between new and old ones…
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It doesn’t sound like you disobeyed him. It sounds like he was saying that it’s okay if you accidentally omit a sin, so long as you don’t omit it on purpose. You weren’t omitting sins, it sounds like you weren’t sure whether you had confessed them before or not.
 
CaptBell800 said:
It doesn’t sound like you disobeyed him. It sounds like he was saying that it’s okay if you accidentally omit a sin, so long as you don’t omit it on purpose. You weren’t omitting sins, it sounds like you weren’t sure whether you had confessed them before or not.
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Thank you!
 
DavidSears said:
Whenever I sin (or remember a sin I committed), I type down the sin in a secure part of my phone and I take it to confession at the end of the week (I have a bad memory). Now some of the sins I remember that I put in are from before my last confession. So I tell my priest some of these are from after my last confession and some are from before. He said as long as you don’t deliberately omit a sin, your sins are forgiven and do not have to say them. But I said them anyway. Did I invalidate the confession because I disobeyed him? I was reading off my list and I didn’t have time to differientiate between new and old ones…
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Remember when you confess your sins, you have to be repentant. Lying to the Holy Spirit is worse. Its dependent entirely on your heart and willing to change. If you are unrepentant, no matter if you confess or not.
One time Padre Pio was asked: “We confess everything that we can remember or know, but perhaps God sees other things that we cannot recall?” He responded: “If we put into [our confession] all our good will and we have the intention to confess [all mortal sins]… all that we can know or remember – the mercy of God is so great that He will include and erase even what we cannot remember or know.”
For this reason one should say at the end of a confession, “and I confess any sins that I may have forgotten and did not mention in this confession.”
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In regards to forgetting to mention a mortal sin in the confessional:

As long as you confess every unconfessed mortal sin that you’re aware of, you’re fine. If you forget to mention a mortal sin in confession, it is forgiven. However, if you remember it later, you have to bring it up next time you go to confession (assuming you don’t forget it again).

The idea with confession is that as long as you don’t hold anything back (in terms of unconfessed mortal sin), God holds nothing back in terms of His mercy. If you forgot something, then your confession is still valid, since you didn’t willfully hold anything back. Afterwards, if you remember an unconfessed mortal sin from the past, then mention it next time you go to confession (whenever that may be), so that, again, you’re not holding anything back. However, the previous confession is still valid, so there’s no need to rust off to confession; you’re still in a state of grace. Just mention it next time you go.

In terms of what happened during the confession you described:

As you mentioned, you didn’t know what was from the past and what was current, so it’s fine that you just read through everything. As a rule of thumb, if you think you suffer from scrupulosity (something that I’ve dealt with for years), I’d strongly advise against keeping lists of sins. When I did that, it caused me to become obsessive about past sins and led me to make ridiculously exhaustive lists that took forever to confess.
 
The priest doesn’t need to know every single, solitary sin you’ve ever done. Like mine might be, “My attitude has been bad, causing me to hold grudges, resentment and to skip mass.” Ok, so there might be some more than that, but that’s an example. I don’t need to say that I had nasty thoughts towards a particular person, which is quite true. That would fall under the resentment part. So, relax. Know that confession is a time of renewal.
 
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DavidSears:
Whenever I sin (or remember a sin I committed), I type down the sin in a secure part of my phone and I take it to confession at the end of the week (I have a bad memory). Now some of the sins I remember that I put in are from before my last confession. So I tell my priest some of these are from after my last confession and some are from before. He said as long as you don’t deliberately omit a sin, your sins are forgiven and do not have to say them. But I said them anyway. Did I invalidate the confession because I disobeyed him? I was reading off my list and I didn’t have time to differientiate between new and old ones…
Click to expand...
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