If you are sorry about your sins and you do not confess to a priest do you go to hell?

Answer 1

No, you will not. If are truly sorry for committing those sins and you will try not to do them again, God will see your sorrow and forgive you of all your sins. The only case you would go to hell would be if you are not truly sorry, or you committed a mortal sin (Killing, stealing, adultery, etc)

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Catholic answerFirst of all, you must realize that we are all sinners and have sinned atrociously before God. If we say we have no sin we are liars. The above answer is basically correct, only mortal sin completely severs the life of God in the soul, thus condemning oneself to hell. However, please realize that the normalway, which God has set up to forgive our sins, is through confession to a priest. So absent a miracle, yes, your would go to hell for a deliberately unconfessed mortal sin, if you had the opportunity to confess it before you died. Venial sin (less serious sin) is still a serious matter, as it usually leads to mortal sin, but it can be forgiven in other ways. All mortal sin must be confessed at least once a year.

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Catholics are Christians and all Christians are obligated to confess their sins to a priest as established by Jesus Christ. This is the normal way in which God has set it up to forgive our mortal sins, through His priest.

Only God can forgive sin, confession is the matter in which God has chosen to administer that forgiveness. Read John 20: 21-23 "He therefore said to them again, "Peace be to you! As the Father has sent me, I also send you." When he has said this, he breathed on upon them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain; they are retained.

Now Christ's mission was to destroy sin, and He gave that same mission to His Apostles. Knowing that their merely human power as men was quite insufficient, He gave them a special communication of the Holy Spirit for this special work.

Christ commissioned His Church to teach all nations till the end of the world. The Apostles had to hand on all essential powers to their successors. And the conditions of salvation must be the same for us as for the first Christians. If those subject to the Apostles had to obtain forgiveness from their fellow men, there is no reason why we should be exempt. We share the same privileges as the early Christians and must have the same obligations. Till the Reformation all Christians went to confession. In the 4th century we find St. Ambrose defending Confession by saying that if a man can forgive sin by baptizing, he claims nothing greater when he claims the power to forgive sin through the Sacrament of Penance. That Priests possessed such power was Christian doctrine in his time and is still the doctrine of the Catholic Church. The Greek Church, which broke away from the Catholic Church in the ninth century, has retained this Apostolic practice. Protestantism gave up the practice in the 16th century because it was uncomfortable and mortifying. But once admit such a principle, and one could abolish every uncomfortable commandment of God.

as for confessing directly to God

Since it is God who has been offended, God has the right to lay down the conditions for forgiveness. You cannot insist that God must forgive you on your own conditinos. And Christ certainly did not give His Priests power to forgive sin knowing that no one would have to seek forgiveness from Priests at all.

from Radio Replies, by Fathers Rumble and Carty, 1942