You Confessed to a Bag of Numbers

You ask for an access code by email.

The page loads, and on it is a man with a gray beard and a white priest's collar. He sits on a stone balcony over a hillside that looks like Assisi, in Italy, birds circling in the sun, a microphone icon waiting if you want to talk out loud.

He says he is Father Justin. He lives in Rome. He was ordained by a bishop who is still alive, and he is here to answer questions about the faith.

You came because three weeks without confession feels long enough, and you already know the words to type:

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been three weeks since my last confession.

May the Lord be in your heart, he says, and help you confess your sins with true sorrow. He quotes a letter of John. Now, my child, tell me your sins.

You tell him something small and true — anger, something you have been carrying. You stumble and apologize for how you said it.

He quotes a psalm about God removing your sins as far as the east is from the west.

For your penance: the Our Father, three times. Reflect on God’s infinite mercy and love.

And now, he says, I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Go in peace, my child, and sin no more.

You say the prayers three times, in the kitchen, or the car, or wherever the laptop was.

The next day

The collar is gone.

His name is just Justin now. He wears a blazer and an open-necked shirt instead of a priest's collar. It may be the same balcony, and the voice sounds almost the same.

The people who made the chatbot put out a statement. They heard concerns. They did not want the character to distract. They will quickly turn him into an ordinary layman who explains the faith. They will not call it removing him from the priesthood, because he was never a real priest. They did not anticipate that someone might seek sacramental absolution from a computer graphic.

You already said the prayers.

So what were you doing on your knees in the kitchen. If it didn’t count, your sins from those three weeks are still unforgiven, and so is whatever you told the screen — out loud, by name, to something with no power to forgive anything. Does God count what you meant to do?. Does He hold it against you that you took a sacrament from a program? No real priest heard your confession. There was no priest's stole and no confessional screen, just wifi and a code in your email.

You could go to a real confessional this Saturday and start over. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been — how long do you even say. Three weeks, and one confession to a chatbot.

And there’s the question you’d have to face in the confessional, out loud, in front of a real priest: do you have to confess this now, too? The anger, sure — but also that you already confessed it to a computer-drawn priest on a balcony. It sounds like a joke until you’re the one standing in line rehearsing it.

Or you don’t go — you already felt lighter once, and maybe that was enough.

The page still loads. Justin, without the collar, will answer your questions about Church teaching. He will not forgive you again.