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He told the apostles, “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them. Whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.”

He told the apostles, “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them. Whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.”

Ah, yes, ANOTHER misunderstood passage Catholics have been taught means their "priests" have inherited a power to forgive or retain sins that Jesus ONLY gave to his Apostles. Yet, we have NO examples of the Apostles ever actually doing that. Wonder why? The preaching of the gospel of the grace of God is how anyone can be forgiven for all their sins when they believe. If someone refuses to believe in Jesus Christ, his sins are not forgiven. Are you aware that the RC practice of private "auricular" (to the ear) confession to a priest was NOT practiced until the 7th. century! Your own catechism admits that:

“Over the centuries the concrete form in which the Church has exercised this power received from the Lord has varied considerably. During the first centuries the reconciliation of Christians who had committed particularly grave sins after their Baptism (for example, idolatry, murder, or adultery) was tied to a very rigorous discipline, according to which penitents had to do public penance for their sins, often for years, before receiving reconciliation. To this ‘order of penitents’ (which concerned only certain grave sins), one was only rarely admitted and in certain regions only once in a lifetime. During the seventh century Irish missionaries, inspired by the Eastern monastic tradition, took to continental Europe the ‘private’ practice of penance, which does not require public and prolonged completion of penitential works before reconciliation with the Church. From that time on, the sacrament has been performed in secret between penitent and priest. This new practice envisioned the possibility of repetition and so opened the way to a regular frequenting of this sacrament. It allowed the forgiveness of grave sins and venial sins to be integrated into one sacramental celebration. In its main lines this is the form of penance that the Church has practiced down to our day” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1447).

You can read more if you dare HERE.

Here is a better understanding of what Jesus said:

Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, etc.—In any literal and authoritative sense this power was never exercised by one of the apostles, and plainly was never understood by themselves as possessed by them or conveyed to them. (See on [1919]Mt 16:19). The power to intrude upon the relation between men and God cannot have been given by Christ to His ministers in any but a ministerial or declarative sense—as the authorized interpreters of His word, while in the actings of His ministers, the real nature of the power committed to them is seen in the exercise of church discipline. (Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary)

I predict that you will continue to post this verse as if NOTHING was ever said to explain it properly so as to presume Jesus was Apostlizing every Roman Catholic priest that ever existed to hear "confession".

He told the apostles, (except for the apostle Paul who was the apostle to the Gentiles) “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them. Whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.”