Why do we have to confess all our sins

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I love the sacrament of reconciliation. I have blessed with many good confessors. The advice is wonderful. And the penances aren’t punishments. They help me feel enlightened and refreshed. The most wonderful thing I experience is the joy of absolution. I feel like, OK. I’ve gotten these sins forgiven. Now I can move on and try harder to overcome them.

But confession isn’t a “feel good” experience.

Scripture makes it clear that the Apostles are empowered to forgive sins.

John 20:21-23:

21* [Jesus ] said to them again “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit. 23 Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”

James 5:16 explains:

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful.
 
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How can God allow this? it is surely resulting in the damnation of many, if priests were to be able to wine and dine with their parishioners more I am sure that there would be less sin being committed. If a priest was present next to someone all the time I am sure that their chances of dying in mortal sin would be much smaller!
 
Have you considered being part of the solution by becoming a priest?

I definitely considered becoming a priest, and then I could have helped this situation, but as I am a woman, God said No.

So this situation of too few priests is just going to continue until more men step up to the plate and take their priest commitment seriously, don’t use the priesthood as a means to commit crimes and behave badly, and don’t go dropping out of the priesthood when the going gets tough or they don’t get their way about marriage or some other thing.

Pray for vocations.
 
Having a priest present constantly would reduce the chance of sin though, imagine being able to have a priest accompany you on a plane for example and you just committed a sexual sin with one of the passengers and the pilot announces that the plane will probably crash, the priest would be able to give you absolution there and then.
 
We will be on our own on judgement day but those who died with a priest at their side will be in a more fortunate position than those who died by themselves.
 
I talk to God, and he talks to me. I don’t take everything in the bible literally. I believe a lot has been left out, and I believe a lot has been misinterpreted.

God made me the way I am. The sacrament of reconciliation is not a healthy choice for me due to scrupulosity and other issues I won’t go in to here. I have to go with that.

God loves us as we are. He works with us. I have faith in that.
 
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This to me sounds like you want a license to sin. If you are travelling around with a priest by your side thinking “I can go and commit some sexual sin with this other passenger and when I get back to my seat I’ll confess and receive absolution”. So now you have committed the sin of fornication and the sin of presumption. What happens then after the pilot announces the plane is going down and before you can confess the priest has a heart attack and dies? . No absolution and you die with mortal sin on your soul. The simple solution is, don’t commit the mortal sin. It’s really not that hard. Keep in mind for a sin to be mortal it has to be grave matter, you have to have full knowledge, and commit it willfully.
 
I do not want a license to sin, I just want Confession to be available easier should I sin. Some people have struggles in their life and some people do struggle with mortal sin, perhaps you don’t but I do and I want Confession to be readily available to be honest. You should feel downright grateful that God has forgiven you for any mortal sins you have committed, most of us deserve to be in Hell. I am not keen on this attitude among many Catholics where there is a lack of pity for those who die in mortal sin, the reality is that so many of the great saints could well have ended up in Hell had God not ensured that they died in a state of grace.
 
oliver109 said:
the reality is that so many of the great saints could well have ended up in Hell had God not ensured that they died in a state of grace.
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The reality is that those people who died in mortal sin could have died in a state of grace and gone to Heaven. The difference between the Saints and those in Hell is that the Saints did everything they could to make sure they avoided mortal sin, not out of fear of Hell, but love of God. No one winds up in Hell accidentally. God is not waiting to play “gotcha” on you and have you die before you get the chance to go to confession.

We are given every chance to be absolved. Some people don’t take up on that and they pay the price for it.
 
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I totally agree with you on that! I went to Confession with a Eastern-Catholic priest a couple weeks ago and he was spending properly time on me. He was surely listening and tried to give me good advice instead of giving me a standardized speech - and I needed that! I remember telling both my brother and my mother later on that it was way more fruitful than any other Confession I´ve ever been to.

It´s likely that I seek him for Confession later on as well if I´m close by his parish. I will highly recommend to go to Confession with an Eastern-Catholic priest - especially if you´re in need of some personal advice.
 
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How do you know ordinary souls who may have gone to Hell have not done everything they could to avoid sinning? There are saints who made a promise one day to not sin again and managed to keep that promise for the next 50 years while there are other saints who sinned until the very day they died, only making that promise not to sin again before they were literally cut down, it is a reality that death is essentially random in nature, some die in grace while others do not.
 
It is why I have no faith in the Church’s teaching about dying and mortal sin. I don’t think we can believe or understand what happens at the moment of death. We put way too much emphasis on the legalities created by man, rather than understanding that God’s love for us is infinite and unimaginable. He does not play us like an arcade game.
 
You are talking sense, none of us asks to die in a state of mortal sin but it obviously happens to many people. Even Thomas Aquinas could not give a satisfactory answer as to why some souls are saved “at the right time” while others “die at the wrong time” and perish. He said that we are not to question God and his judgements which is fine but it is still a very chilling answer and does not leave anyone in comfort.
 
I find comfort in using my common sense God gave us with regards to all this. Does it make sense to you that a loving God would create us humans the way he did, only to choose an arbitrary time to snuff us out…oh no, just the day before we intended to go to confession to confess our mortal sin because we couldn’t go today because we had to work to put a roof over our family’s head (or whatever other legitimate reason)…and send us to hell for being human and sinning “mortally”? Of course it doesn’t Aquinas lived in a different time with different understandings.

It is up to you if you want to live in the discomfort of believing something that is not reasonable and based in nothing other than “other people saying so”, or if you want to live with the comfort of having faith that our God is better than that. I choose the second.
 
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Another reasoned response, the trouble is that reasonable as what you have written is the church still has not moved on from the age of Aquinas. Leading figures in the church really do believe that someone who dies suddenly before confessing a mortal sin can go to Hell because of the punishment that is granted to unconfessed mortal sin that can only be eternal.
 
I know they do. I am a cafeteria Catholic, and this type of reasoning (on the Church’s part) is why.
 
Well I think it is important to not be lukewarm in ones faith and to strive as much as you can to follow all the commandments of the Church. Attitudes like the ones one sees in the church though I believe are the reason why we have so many problems in our society, especially in America and Britain like homelessness and long term unemployment. We are told to have no mercy on those who have done wrong many times, the homeless person who is homeless because they got fired from their job has themselves to blame and so should remain in misery for the rest of their life for example, this is like what the church teaches about the souls in Hell.
 
I can’t really answer what you say about Aquinas without reading it myself, can you give some more context? Or link to the full text?

I’ve heard some on these forums claim that God knows whether a person would use a second chance wisely or not and gives them to those who need them, but I’m not sure if this is right
 
Here is the text from Aquinas: The reason for the predestination of some, and reprobation of others, must be sought for in the goodness of God. Thus He is said to have made all things through His goodness, so that the divine goodness might be represented in things. Now it is necessary that God’s goodness, which in itself is one and undivided, should be manifested in many ways in His creation; because creatures in themselves cannot attain to the simplicity of God. Thus it is that for the completion of the universe there are required different grades of being; some of which hold a high and some a low place in the universe. That this multiformity of grades may be preserved in things, God allows some evils, lest many good things should never happen, as was said above (I:22:2). Let us then consider the whole of the human race, as we consider the whole [universe]( God wills to manifest His [goodness]( in men; in respect to those whom He predestines, by means of His mercy, as sparing them; and in respect of others, whom he reprobates, by means of His justice, in punishing them. This is the reason why [God]) elects some and rejects others. To this the [Apostle]( refers, saying (Romans 9:22-23): “What if God, willing to show His wrath [that is, the vengeance of His justice], and to make His power known, endured [that is, permitted] with much patience vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction; that He might show the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He hath prepared unto glory” and ([2 Timothy 2:20] “But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver; but also of wood and of earth; and some, indeed, unto honor, but some unto dishonor.” Yet why He chooses some for [glory](http://, and reprobates others, has no reason, except the divine [will]Whence Augustine says “Why He draws one, and another He draws not, seek not to judge, if thou dost not wish to err.”
 
Be free of that worry. If you list every mortal sin you can remember you’re fine. Absolution doesn’t depend on our ability to remember every sin.

I confessed for the first time as a convert, 12 years after my baptism. You’re not alone just do your best. It won’t be as bad as you think.

If you’re super nervous, use the screen.
 
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