Should we accept our past or not? Meaning, should we confess our past mistakes and repent of them or not?

According to the practice and tradition of the Catholic Church, both individually and as a community, we own up our past, the mistakes we have made, confess them, ask for forgiveness, and promise not to repeat them again. That is what one does in a personal confession. As head of the Church, Pope John Paul II, in the year 2000 publicly apologized to the world and to God for the mistakes the Church committed throughout history. Before his death, Pope Benedict XVI confessed and apologized in 2022 for his handling of sexual abuse of priests while he was the Archbishop of Munich. Pope Francis, on the other hand, has publicly apologized several times for the mistakes and errors on the part of the Church, in different occasions.

However, the way of the world is different. Today, the sense of political identity does not allow many peoples and nations to accept their past as a people.

Not only that, they also seem to be denying that it never happened. Can an individual, a society, or a nation that takes such a stance be able to move forward?