If you want a technical answer (and please anyone correct me if I’m wrong for his sake) then all your sins were forgiven provided that you did not intentionally withhold the child porn, incest porn, or whatever it was you were watching. Because you decided to just label it under ‘porn’ for simplicity’s sake, and may not have put much thought into why or why not specifically these things should be mentioned, it would imply to me that you did not think it through all the way when you made the confession, which may have reduced your culpability in terms of withholding information or making a dishonest confession- you may not have wanted to leave anything out, but you ended up doing that because you felt just using one label for the sin and generalizing it, at the time, was acceptable. Whether or not it was doesn’t seem like the real issue. The real issue, in my opinion, seems to be about intent.
I would like to believe that all your sins were forgiven provided you made an honest confession. If you purposely left out the child porn, etc., because it would embarrass you or whatever, then the confession was likely invalidated, as you will have made a bad confession.
Although, you make a good point overall. And it gives me much to think about personally whenever I confess sexual sins, in the future. Actually, this thread has made me more self conscious, and now I’m wondering whether my past confessions were invalid because I too just confessed “internet pornography”. In all honesty, I didn’t think to seperate it into categories, and in my case, that would be hard to do, since the majority of pornography I’ve ever looked at was manga/anime style comic book porn. It’s called hentai. And in this medium of porn, the sexual things that happen are often times not realistic or something you could tie down to a real-world sin. If anything, porn of this nature is far worse than “normal” porn, because it creates scenarios and things that exist beyond the typical ‘man and woman have raunchy sex’ script that porn usually has.
Now I wonder whether, in my next confession, I need to confess anime porn or I can just call it porn like I’ve been doing. It’s not like my priest is going to know the difference, and if you ask me, it would be scandalous to try and make them understand. “Well, father, anime porn is…” is just something you don’t want to get into. Not because you’re ashamed to admit what you’ve allowed yourself to be pleasured by, but because you just want to try and save time and be practical with the confession.
In getting back to you, I think this is what you were trying to do- like me, you’ve just been trying to be practical about it. If it turns out we’re both wrong now and have always been, then we should both bring it up in our next confession. My question then, is, how do we know if the priest doesn’t say anything? Who exactly do you go to for validation that you’re right or wrong in how you’ve been confessing? If you try and explain things, no matter how you go about it, it’s scandalous to be talking about, since you’re talking about which perversion or moral disorder is worse, etc, and whether or not they’re so bad they need to be confessed individually. Who measures that outside of the confessional? And is the priest really in a position to understand, even when absolving? Should he be made to or can we just have faith that Jesus knows your heart and the complexity that comes along with classifying sins in this way, that you don’t need to be THAT specific or scrupulous, and because the priest absolved you, you were absolved, period? Afterall, Jesus wouldn’t want you to stress out over it, either, or have you leave feeling empty-handed.
This is alot of interesting food for thought, and more than that, something we need to know for the good of our soul.
I know this thread was meant for the OP, but if anyone would like to take a try at my issue specifically, I would appreciate it.
That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you. For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people. Therefore shall ye keep mine ordinance, that ye commit not any one of these abominable customs, which were committed before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am the LORD your God.”