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James 5:16 says "confess your sins to one another".

To "one another" doesn't obviously mean a church officer, though that is the way Catholicism likes to interpret it. Confessing our weaknesses, failings, even our sins when we have sinned against someone is part of the fellowship of Christians as well as doing what is right when we offend another person. When a member of a local church was guilty of grave sin and was cast out of the fellowship, as Paul commended the Corinthian church to do, then a public confession and appropriate signs of repentance were a necessary part of rejoining the fellowship. There is NO evidence from Scripture of a priestly role for the Body of Christ outside of the one we all are given to offer sacrifices of praise to the ONE who has redeemed us through His grace. Only God can forgive sins, as Jesus said as well as the Old Testament prophets.

John 20:23 has Jesus telling the Apostles, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you hold them bound, they are held bound." That verse only makes sense in the context of an actual confession of sin to officers of the church. How can they know what to forgive without being told?

Again, this is a Catholic Church interpretation that was not believed by the first Christians. Another way to see this passage could be:

Whose soever sins ... - It is worthy of remark here that Jesus confers the same power on all the apostles. He gives to no one of them any special authority. If Peter, as the Papists pretend, had been appointed to any special authority, it is wonderful that the Saviour did not here hint at any such pre-eminence. This passage conclusively proves that they were invested with equal power in organizing and governing the church. The authority which he had given Peter to preach the gospel first to the Jews and the Gentiles, does not militate against this. See the notes at Matthew 16:18-19. This authority given them was full proof that they were inspired. The meaning of the passage is not that man can forgive sins that belongs only to God Isaiah 43:23 but that they should be inspired; that in founding the church, and in declaring the will of God, they should be taught by the Holy Spirit to declare on what terms, to what characters, and to what temper of mind God would extend forgiveness of sins. It was not authority to forgive individuals, but to establish in all the churches the terms and conditions on which men might be pardoned, with a promise that God would confirm all that they taught; that all might have assurance of forgiveness who would comply with those terms; and that those who did not comply should not be forgiven, but that their sins should be retained. This commission is as far as possible from the authority which the Roman Catholic claims of remitting sin and of pronouncing pardon. (Barnes' Notes on the Bible)

Why would you think that the same John had forgotten that verse -- which he wrote! -- when he wrote his Epistle? That is the context in which to understand "If we confess our sins ..."

John wrote as he was led of the Holy Spirit. It wasn't a matter of him forgetting what he said previously, but what he wrote was what God spoke through him. Confession of personal sin through auricular confession to a priest was not something the early church knew or practiced. It ties back to the doctrine of the Atonement and our justification by faith apart from works. The following link gives an historical background to the development of this practice and the doctrines that came about http://www.christiantruth.com/articles/penancehistory.html:

At the close of the twelfth century a complete change was made in the doctrine of penance. The theory of the early Church, elaborated by Tertullian and other Church fathers, was that penance is efficient to remove sins committed after baptism, and that it consisted in certain penetential exercises such as prayer and alms. The first elements added by the medieval system were that confession to the priest and absolution by the priest are necessary conditions for pardon. Peter the Lombard did not make mediation of the priest a requirement, but declared that confession to God was sufficient. In his time, he says, there was no agreement on three aspects of penance: first, whether contrition for sin was not all that was necessary for its remission; second, whether confession to the priest was essential; and third, whether confession to a layman was insufficient. The opinions handed down from the Fathers, he asserts, were diverse, if not antagonistic.

Alexander of Hales marks a new era in the history of the doctrine. He was the first of the Schoolmen to answer clearly all these questions, and to him more than any other single theologian does the Catholic Church owe its doctrine of penance...Beginning with Alexander of Hales, the Schoolmen vindicate the positions that confession, to be efficacious, must be made to the priest, and that absolution by the priest is an essential condition of the sinner’s pardon. Bonaventura, after devoting much time to the question, ‘Whether it is sufficient to confess our sins to God,’ answered it in the negative. At greater length than Peter the Lombard had done, he quoted the Fathers to show that there was no unanimity among them on the question (Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1910), Volume 5, pp.731-732, 735-737).

The Council of Trent makes the comment that from the very beginning the Church had practiced secret confession to a priest and it anathematizes anyone who denies this. But such an assertion is simply unsupportable by the historical evidence. Once again the Roman Church makes dogmatic assertions which, like so many of its teaching on Tradition, the papacy and Mary, can find no historical support.

It is quite obvious from these statements and the evidence that has been presented that confession and penance for many centuries in the Church was very different from the sacrament which the Council of Trent dogmatically asserts is binding on all believers and necessary for salvation. Its assertion that the form of the sacrament which it officially sanctioned had been the universal practice of the Church from the very beginning is totally false. It was not until the beginning of the eighth century that private confession began to displace the public form and it did not become a universal practice until the Middle Ages.

Such is the history of the development of the Roman Catholic sacrament of penance and confession in its teaching on forgiveness of sins. And closely aligned with this development is also the development of the Church’s teachings on indulgences and purgatory. From these quotes it is very apparent that major changes eventually take place in the overall teaching and practice of penance. It obviously continued to be consistently practiced and became inculcated in the Church to such a degree that, in the Middle Ages, it developed into a very regulated affair in which certain punishments were prescribed for specific sins. These were written down in penitential books which document for us the penitential practice of the Church beginning at about the seventh century.

It is inescapable that what the Catholic Church teaches concerning justification, repentance, confession, penance and expiation of sin today was NOT what the early, Apostolic church understood or practiced nor what had been taught to them by the Apostles through Divinely-inspired Scriptures.