A French phone line offering a direct line to God has drawn the wrath of the bishops, writes RUADHAN Mac CORMAICParis Correspondent
‘HELLO AND welcome to the Line of the Lord,” says a soothing automated male voice, as an organ plays softly in the background. “Confession is not the exclusive preserve of a priest. The Line of the Lord is dedicated to helping you put yourself in the presence of God, in order to receive his grace.” Then comes a gentle warning for big-time sinners. “In the case of serious or mortal sins – that is, sins that have cut you off from Christ our Lord – it is imperative that you confide in a priest, as only he can help you and accord you the sacrament of reconciliation.”
With that, the organ pipes up again, and we get down to business. “For advice on confessing, press one. To confess, press two. To listen to some confessions, press three.” Operated by a Paris-based company, the newly-created Le Fil du Seigneur (The Line of the Lord) charges callers up to 34 cent a minute for the chance to confess their sins from the comfort of their own homes – and without having to see a priest at all. In the first week after its launch at the beginning of Lent, it received about 300 calls.
“I’m a believer, and nowadays people are going to Mass less and less,” says Camille Hautier, the employee at Aabas Interactive who created the service. “So I said to myself: why not bring the faithful closer to their church by means of the telephone.”
The company positions itself as a defender of the faith. It points out that Mass-going among French Catholics is in “free fall”, and that there has been a sharp decline in the number of priests being ordained. “It’s a subject that’s close to our heart, and our goal wasn’t to turn a profit,” Hautier adds.
The service hasn’t pleased the French Catholic hierarchy, and the Conference of French Bishops warned in a statement this week that the line had “no approval from the Catholic Church in France”. It was “unacceptable to allow confusion over the notion of confession”, the bishops said. “For the Catholic faithful, confession has a sacramental meaning and requires the real presence of a priest.”
Not only do callers to Le Fil du Seigneur not get a priest, they don’t even get to speak to a live person. There’s no “press four to speak to a confession service representative”, as the system is entirely automated.
Instead, the repentant are guided through their prayers by the recording of a softly spoken man’s voice, then asked to hit a button to enter their confession and another one if they want their words to be recorded and made available to others.
According to Hautier, what the company offers is not confession “in the strictly sacramental sense” of the term. “We take the term confession more generally. In other words, we don’t offer absolution . . . and you don’t have a priest on the line. With our service, the idea is to confess directly to God, and so we put in place a pious, welcoming atmosphere for prayer.”
The whole experience is deeply strange, but users who press three (“to listen to some confessions”) are in for an awkward few minutes. Here, you can listen to callers who have agreed to their confession being made publicly available. Suddenly, you find yourself on the other side of the confessional, listening to a middle-aged woman who prefers to watch TV instead of going to Mass, another one who severed all ties with her mother (she had her reasons), and a drug addict who stole from his friends and family.
Since the story of Le Fil du Seigneur was picked up by a French paper this week, the company that runs it has been accused of exploiting believers and cashing in on their piety. But Hautier is unrepentant, claiming the Catholic Church itself set up a phone line for people who wanted to pray to Our Lady of Lourdes, at a cost of 34 cent a minute.
Although one of the Line of the Lord numbers costs the same amount, 40 per cent of that is given to charity, she says, while a second line only charges callers 15 cent a minute. “That’s the minimum we could charge because we have our costs to meet. We couldn’t make it any lower.”
For the record, two calls made by The Irish Times came to just over €5 in total. My sin? That I’m thinking of charging my employer for some calls to a premium-rate confessional helpline.
