Validity of Confession - Do I need to reconfess?

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According to my understanding, if the OP went to Fr. A for confession but purposefully withheld a mortal sin, then that was not a valid confession. Nothing was forgiven.

However, if he then went back to Fr. A and confessed the withheld sin, and Fr. A was aware of who the OP is–and thereby generally aware of all the other sins he had mentioned in the previous confession–then the OP would not have had to repeat all those sins again in the second confession. Fr. A was already aware of them. So, ultimately, Fr. A was aware of all mortal sins and was in a position to make a judgment concerning the OP’s sins.

If the OP went to Fr. B and confessed the omitted sin only, that would not be enough. He’d have to confess everything to Fr. B so that Fr. B would be aware of the whole picture.

Dan
 
acanonlawyer said:
According to my understanding, if the OP went to Fr. A for confession but purposefully withheld a mortal sin, then that was not a valid confession. Nothing was forgiven.

However, if he then went back to Fr. A and confessed the withheld sin, and Fr. A was aware of who the OP is–and thereby generally aware of all the other sins he had mentioned in the previous confession–then the OP would not have had to repeat all those sins again in the second confession. Fr. A was already aware of them. So, ultimately, Fr. A was aware of all mortal sins and was in a position to make a judgment concerning the OP’s sins.

If the OP went to Fr. B and confessed the omitted sin only, that would not be enough. He’d have to confess everything to Fr. B so that Fr. B would be aware of the whole picture.

Dan
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You actually raise an excellent point. This is a key example of a material point that may have been missed in the original narrative.
 
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edward_george1 said:
What is generally advised in this case is to make a single “general confession.” General confession DOES NOT look like “I committed X sin 35,642 times, etc,” but rather is, as the name suggests, “general,” as in “I committed X sin frequently during my college years,” or “I committed Y sin on a weekly basis for such-and-such a period.” This is one area where specificity is actually not wholly necessary, but the idea is to account for one’s sins for his whole life, or at least back to the period of the last certain confession, as best as one can in general.
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Father,

Thank you for your contribution here. I apologize for helping further derail the thread but now I’m curious about my own personal predicament.

I was away from the Church for about four years and came back to the Sacraments this last Advent. I made the inconsiderate mistake of coming to confession during the scheduled, weekly time slot rather than making a private appointment with a priest where we could more properly flesh things out. The line behind me ended up getting quite long and when I made it inside the confessional I mentioned to the priest that it was my first confession in four years. He stopped me and told me that I should’ve made an appointment instead but that he would go ahead and grant me absolution after I mention only my three biggest sins over the last four years.

Since then I’ve gone to confession every week and each time have made an integral confession of my sins committed since that first confession after my reversion. It never occurred to me to confess those sins in the next confession. I was under the impression that the first absolution was valid and that my intention to confess despite my imprudence in doing so during the Saturday time slot was sufficient. I left it all behind me.

Is this a chain of invalid confessions? Should I re-examine my conscience from those four years and make an appointment this time to confess them? I do not suffer from scrupulosity. Indeed I could probably benefit from some more scruples!

Thank you.
 
You were cut off by the priest, so it wasn’t your fault you didn’t get to confess everything. Plus, since you were away from the sacrament for so long, the degree of specificity necessary would be far less. Unless you had a lot of specific sins that you are certain were mortal, you’re probably in the clear. If you absolutely would need to for your peace of mind, you could probably make an appointment to talk to a priest about this, but otherwise I’d just move on and not worry about it. You have not indicated having done anything willfully that would have invalidated a confession.

-Fr ACEGC
 
This is something I was thinking but I had no idea if that could count as direct remission or not (and wasn’t completely sure if the OP had gone to the same priest for confession both times).

Thanks for your (name removed by moderator)ut here.
 
AlbertDerGrosse said:
Confession #2: OP realizes the error of his ways, comes back and confesses to that sin of sacrilege, tries to re-confess all the other sins from that last confession (because the entire thing was invalid) but is prevented from doing so by the second confessor. He is given absolution after this second confession.
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I think there’s a slight difference in the original scenario (at least by my reading) in that at the second confession the OP confessed just to having withheld the specific sin, because he was unaware that the others needed to be confessed. So after hearing that omitting a mortal sin invalidates a confession, he asked the priest outside of the sacrament about those other sins that were only mentioned the first time (since they wouldn’t have been forgiven there), sometime after the second confession.

I don’t think it really makes much of a difference though on the OP’s end.
 
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I had a situation where i made a number of bad confessions, mostly years ago. Years later, i realized the severity of what i had done and that reconfession was the way this is supposed to be handled… I went to several confessions, said what i had done, including the added sins of Sacramental abuse.

I actually went to several Priests about this. None made me reconfess. By the end of this period I was settling on one main Confessor. I was still in extreme doubt because I had not reconfessed, so I came to Confession fully prepared to confess to any sin that I might have also confessed in the invalid confessions. Fully ready to do whatever it took. But the Priest would not hear my reconfession and absolved me. Later I started to doubt how this could be done, because I was so stuck on re confession. I talked to him about it, he explained it was licit and valid to handle my situation this way. He told me the sins were gone, that he made his judgment. However, none of the original confessions I invalidated were with him. In light of ACanonLawyers post, should I continue to defer to my Confessor, or should I attempt to re confess?
 
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Thank you for your advice and all the other advice you have helped me with.
 
This thread has been interesting and informative - thanks to all for your efforts and engagement!

I had to laugh at this…
edward_george1 said:
… General confession DOES NOT look like “I committed X sin 35,642 times, etc,”
…
-Fr ACEGC
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🤣

Only a Catholic would “get” that one… 🙂
 
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