Sexual Sins Confessed?

[needy5]

Do I need to confess my sexual sins in detail if when I confessed it I said, “different kinds of sexual sins about 1000 times total” - Yesterday, I went through the list of remembering everything from my teen years, I don’t know if it is a false feeling to want to confess it again, but in detail?

 

[Fraevo63]

On December 22, 2018 I went to confession for the very first time in my life at age 55. I did not go into detail about my sexual sins or I would have been in there for a week. Not joking. I said fornication and adultery. The priest understood and absolved me of all my sins.

 

[PaulfromIowa]

Don’t abuse your confessor with unnecessary detail. There is nothing new under the sun.

 

[Kima]

If you remember to do so: kind and number of sin is enough

 

[GospelOfMatthew]

I’ve had priests tell me they don’t need specific numbers, like ‘53 instances of impurity’. Rather, they want a ballpark like just once, a couple times, or many times.

The reason for this he said is, we have a tendency to rationalize our sins so we often say “I did X 7 times but one time I stopped quickly and two other times I was really stressed.”

This kind of mentioning sins is rationalizing them, its best if we are quick and to the point so we don’t try and rationalize which means we aren’t really as sorry as we should be potentially. Just say like “I did [insert name of sexual sin] once/a few times/many times.”. The priests I’ve confessed with don’t need any more details then that and don’t want to hear them in the confessional either