> Not to be outdone, a protestant church in Germany has developed a robot called - I kid you not - BlessU-2. BlessU-2, which looks like a character designed by Aardman Animations, can ‘forgive your sins in five different languages’, which must be handy if they’re too embarrassing to confess to a human.
> The first form of confession and absolution is done at the Divine Service with the assembled congregation (similar to the Anglican tradition). Here, the entire congregation pauses for a moment of silent confession, recites the confiteor, and receives God's forgiveness through the pastor as he says the following (or similar): "Upon this your confession and in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
...so you don't need to actually confess your sins to anyone, but you do need a priest to "hand out" God's forgiveness. Which is what this robot (which is "meant to start a debate about the future of technology and the church" in the city where Martin Luther nailed his "95 Theses" to the church door) does.
Except that's not how it works for protestants. In the Lutheran church, to quote Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confession_(religion)#Lutheran...):
> The first form of confession and absolution is done at the Divine Service with the assembled congregation (similar to the Anglican tradition). Here, the entire congregation pauses for a moment of silent confession, recites the confiteor, and receives God's forgiveness through the pastor as he says the following (or similar): "Upon this your confession and in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
...so you don't need to actually confess your sins to anyone, but you do need a priest to "hand out" God's forgiveness. Which is what this robot (which is "meant to start a debate about the future of technology and the church" in the city where Martin Luther nailed his "95 Theses" to the church door) does.