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Oh, Lord..."Renshaw said that in his 40 years of hearing confessions he didn't think anyone had told him a sin." Oh my!

If he did not consider the cofessions, confessions of "sin", then he probably didn't forgive them. He probably told them there was nothing to forgive.

Does this mean that those sins remain with the penitents? Or is it good enough if they just confess their sins to God? IOW can God forgive their sins himself? Or is this an essential function of the priesthood?

I'm pretty ignorant of my own faith sometimes.

If I had to hazard a guess, I suppose that the absolution given which is formulaic, (at least I hope he gave absolution), is given alter Christus. St. Francis was very clear in that Christ acts through even the sinful, unrepentent priest in the Consecration. I can't think that it would be any different in Confession. Although, the sin must be repented for the Confession to be valid.

The truly evil part is that many people, myself included, look to the priest for advice in overcoming a particular sin or a problem in a relationship. How many people left the Confessional perfectly happy because the priest gave them the, "There, there, be at peace," happys?

Any priests on board could clear that up. You raise an interesting situation.

You're essentially revisiting the "Donatist Heresy" ... although with some slight differences. The basic claim of the Donatists was that Christians who had shown weakness in the face of Roman persecution (the emperor Diocletian, in particular, IIRC) had lost the ability to perform the Sacraments. Indeed, they seem to have thought that they had even ceased to be Christians, and needed to be re-baptised.

The problems were twofold: 1) the Donatists denied that the Sacraments (Baptism, Holy Orders) effect a permanent change in the person who received them and 2) that the effectiveness of the Sacrament depends on the personal holiness of the minister.

To the contrary, the Church holds that although the Sacrament is visibly performed by the minister, its effectiveness is solely by God's Grace, irrespective of the state of the minister's soul.

To your questions, then. God can forgive our sins any way He wants to. He has given us the Sacrament of Pennance as the ordinary way, but that does not limit Him. I believe that those who went, in good faith and contrition, had their sins forgiven ... what this bugger denied them was the good advice in avoiding sin that can come from a good confessor. Worse, he may have convinced them that sinful behaviour is not sinful ... what effect that may have on them I do not know, but for him to do it is monstrous. (Woe unto those whho call evil 'good' ...)