Why Can't We Just Ask God to Forgive Our Sins?

It may feel unintuitive to confess your sins to someone, much less a priest, since we would much rather keep our sins internal and pray to God directly for forgiveness. While we can pray to God directly to ask for forgiveness from our sins, through Confession we have the assurance of Jesus' own words that we are forgiven. In John 20:23, Matthew 18:17-18, James 5:13-16, and 2 Corinthians 5:18-19, God shows us the power of confessing our sins to Him, through His chosen representative, the priest. These verses illustrate why we confess our sins to the priest rather than simply praying by ourselves to God to be forgiven, with more practical reasons below:

Confession gives us concrete sign that our sins are forgiven. If we just pray, we would be left wondering if our sins were really forgiven… confession eliminates this doubt.

Confession emphasizes the gravity of sin: if we could simply pray to God afterward to be forgiven, the gravity of sin would be reduced, as it would be easy to just sin and then immediately ask for forgiveness… kind of like how if you had a body of superhero that could heal itself, you would take a lot more risk, and you wouldn't care if you get injured. Same too with sin, you would start not to care about sinning, which is directly contrary to the holiness that God is calling us to.

Confession allows people to receive advice on how to improve (it's impossible to recover from addiction alone, so too with sin.)