I know a cardinal who is a good example. He confided to me, speaking of these things, that as soon as someone goes to him to talk about those sins below the belt, he immediately says: ‘I understand, let’s move on.’ He stops him, as if to say: ‘I understand, but let’s see if you have something more important. Do you pray? Are you seeking the Lord? Do you read the Gospel? He makes him understand that there are mistakes that are much more important than that. Yes, it is a sin, but… He says to him: ‘I understand’: And he moves on. On the opposite end there are some who when they receive the confession of a sin of this kind, ask: ‘How did you do it, and when did you do it, and how many times?’ And they make a ‘film’ in their head. But these are in need of a psychiatrist.”
Council of Trent, Decree on the Sacrament of Penance
CANON VII.–If any one saith, that, in the sacrament of Penance, it is not necessary, of divine right, for the remission of sins, to confess all and singular the mortal sins which after due and diligent previous meditation are remembered, even those (mortal sins) which are secret, and those which are opposed to the two last commandments of the Decalogue, as also the circumstances which change the species of a sin; but (saith) that such confession is only useful to instruct and console the penitent, and that it was of old only observed in order to impose a canonical satisfaction; or saith that they, who strive to confess all their sins, wish to leave nothing to the divine mercy to pardon ; or, finally, that it is not lawful to confess venial sins ; let him be anathema.
Laodicea 
January 26, 2019 at 9:05 pm
It could be that the Holy Father and his cardinal friend are convinced that most sexual sins are not mortal. In that case the cardinal’s advice can make sense because dwelling on certain (venial) sins can be a source of fruitless anxiety & scrupulosity rather than sincere conversion. I don’t know what the Holy Father’s reasoning is though for thinking that most sexual sins are merely venial. Perhaps reduced culpability because of prevailing immodesty, I don’t know. We might also speculate that most souls still going to confession (in Europe) are the more devout sort and fall into these sins more often through weakness rather than through malice (open seduction). My main wish would be that the Holy Father had more clearly connected praying / seeking the Lord / reading the Gospel with the fruit of chastity. I think there is a real logic to it: in the sense in which Aquinas says those who are without spiritual pleasures will soon turn to material pleasures, because men can’t live without pleasure for long. And the devil can torment devout souls who have a high esteem of chastity to such an extent that their lives as Christians are marked more by shame than anything else – I think this, reading them charitably, is what the Holy Father’s statements were getting at.
Today’s hierarchy might feel hypocritical preaching about chastity, but what I really wish for is a recovery of the evangelical praise & practice of chastity. Surely it’s this that will make Christian families shine in our dark neo-pagan times. We live in such depraved times as regard sexual morality that it will indeed take extraordinary prayer / seeking the Lord / faith in the scriptures for young souls to get through unwounded.
January 29, 2019 at 8:33 am
Presumably he does think that many completed sexual sins are light matter. But then he is contrary to St Paul and to the whole of tradition (including certain weighty papal condemnations, which I don’t however have to hand).