I don't know, maybe it's just me but I can't imagine feeling the same reassurance after talking to a priest, as I do after talking to God. But I've been doing it for a very long time, so maybe it's just me. Who knows.
It just seems to me that if you want to be assured that you're forgiven...all that you have to do is ask. God'll know if you're sincere, maybe you won't, and maybe a priest won't, but He will. Of course we in our human frailty are never quite sure, so it's good every once in a while to just sit and talk. Even if you feel like there's nobody there to listen, talk anyway. Because talking reveals repentance, and repentance begets forgiveness. So talk to God, maybe He's listening, and maybe He's not. The forgiveness will come all the same.
I know, you think that confession is important. But maybe what you consider confessing and what I consider talking are actually one and the same thing. It's just that you think that it requires a priest and perhaps some level of formality, and I don't.
Priests are no doubt wonderful people, and they may well have their place, but I just don't think that it's as an intercessory between me and God.
I didn't say that confession requires a priest. I said that some people find it helpful.
People are different. If you don't find confession with a priest helpful, you don't have to do it. But for those who do find it helpful, why begrudge it?
This sacrament has been of huge benefit to me. It has freed me from guilt, assisted me in bereavement following the death of my father, and delivered me from a lifelong irrational fear and hatred of hearses, among other spiritual benefits.
When it comes to pastoral care and the nuances thereof, however,
@Paidiske is more knowledgeable than I. However, here is what I can tell you.
There are two ways to do confession, the first being auricular confession in complete , legally protected privacy with a priest. There are issues surrounding this and what to do when someone confesses paedophilia, hence this thread. However, this form, and the privacy and intimacy of it, has really helped me a great deal personally.
The other way is general confession via the liturgical confiteor, where the congregation prays for forgiveness for all sins they have committed and the priest absolves them without hearing the details. This is mainly done as the sole means of confession in low church Protestant churches, but it can be of benefit in promoting compunction and humility in any liturgical setting.
There is also a variant on this option, or a hybrid, if you like, implemented by St. John of Kronstadt, who is credited with restoring frequent reception of the Eucharist to the Russian Orthodox Church, whereas for a few centuries, following the Nikonian Schism, there was a problem similar to that which once plagued the Roman Catholic Church, where people would confess and partake of the Eucharist only once a year, despite it being served at every divine liturgy. Some priests grew accustomed to this, so while to my knowledge the gifts were never reserved for the priest as it used to be in Solemn Masses and the Mass of the Presanctified in the Roman Rite, and still is in the Armenian Rite during Lent (when paradoxically, every other Orthodox Church encourages more frequent communion), many people came to St. John’s parish on Sunday in the port city of Kronstadt adjacent to St. Petersburg, too many to hear all their confessions individually as per the Russian tradition of auricular confession before every divine liturgy or once a month plus the first time one attends the parish, so he had the entire congregation simultaneously shout their confessions, so they would drown each other out, and then absolved them and gave the Eucharist to each of them.
