Catholics do go to God directly — constantly: in private prayer, in daily contrition, at every Mass. Confession is not a substitute for that; it is one specific way God chose to deliver His forgiveness. The objection assumes “priest” and “God” are rival routes to the same place. They are not. The priest forgives nothing by his own power; God forgives through him, exactly as Scripture describes. So the real question is whether Christ established such a channel — and He did, in plain words.

On Easter night the risen Christ breathed on the apostles and said: “As the Father hath sent me, I also send you… Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained” (John 20:21–23). Read that last clause slowly. He gave them power to retain sins as well as forgive them — and a confessor cannot weigh whether to forgive or retain unless the penitent first tells him what was done. The power to retain only works out loud. That is confession.

This is not a Catholic over-reading. St. James tells the sick to “bring in the priests of the church… and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess therefore your sins one to another” (James 5:14–16) — priests, prayer, forgiveness, and confession in a single breath. St. Paul says God “hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18): a delegated office, not merely each person’s private access. The same keys to bind and loose that Christ entrusted to His Church2 (Matthew 18:18) are still exercised by men ordained in unbroken succession from those apostles.

The early Church read it exactly this way. St. John Chrysostom marveled that priests had received “an authority which God has not given to angels or archangels… what priests do here below God ratifies above.”1 And confessing aloud to a man is humbling — which is part of the point: sin spoken is sin owned, and the words “I absolve you” give a certainty no private feeling ever can. You are not telling the priest instead of God; you are hearing God’s own forgiveness in the voice He appointed to deliver it. The fuller biblical and patristic case for sacramental confession walks through every text.