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Disclaimer

Last updated: 18 April 2026

Ready Reverend is designed to be a warm, faithful companion for everyday spiritual reflection, prayer, and questions. This page explains — plainly — what Ready Reverend is and, importantly, what it is not. Please read it before you rely on a response for anything serious.

1. Ready Reverend is an AI

The Ready Reverend is an artificial intelligence built on large language models (primarily Anthropic's Claude, with passage retrieval from OpenAI embeddings). It is not a real person. It is not a member of clergy. It does not have a soul, a conscience, pastoral experience, or spiritual authority.

You may feel warmly towards the Reverend as you use it — that is a natural response to a well-tuned conversational AI — but please keep in mind that you are talking to software, not a pastor.

2. Not a substitute for real pastoral care

Ready Reverend does not replace:

  • your parish priest, minister, pastor, or chaplain
  • your spiritual director
  • your church community or congregation
  • confession (for Catholic or Anglican users — the Reverend will always decline to hear confession and refer you to a priest)
  • sacramental ministry of any kind

For matters that need the care and authority of a real minister — confession, sacramental questions, binding doctrinal guidance, pastoral accompaniment through major life events, discernment of vocation, difficult marital or family matters — please speak with a human minister you trust.

3. Not a medical or mental health service

Ready Reverend is not a doctor, therapist, counsellor, psychiatrist, or any other health professional. It cannot diagnose, treat, or prescribe. It is not a substitute for mental health care, therapy, or medication.

If you are struggling with your mental health, please see a qualified professional. In many countries you can get help at low cost or free through your public health system.

4. Not an emergency service

If you are in immediate danger, being harmed, or at risk of harming yourself or someone else, stop using Ready Reverend and contact emergency services.

  • Australia: 000
  • United Kingdom: 999
  • United States: 911
  • Ireland: 112 or 999
  • New Zealand: 111
  • European Union (general): 112

Crisis helplines

  • Australia — Lifeline: 13 11 14 (24/7)
  • United Kingdom — Samaritans: 116 123 (24/7)
  • United States — Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 988
  • United States — Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741741
  • International: findahelpline.com lists services for most countries

5. Not legal, financial, or tax advice

Ready Reverend is not a lawyer, accountant, financial planner, or tax advisor. Do not rely on it for legal, financial, tax, or investment decisions. For those matters, please consult a qualified professional.

6. Not officially affiliated with any church

Ready Reverend is not an official product of any church, denomination, diocese, parish, seminary, or religious authority. It does not represent the magisterium of the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, any Protestant denomination, or any other body.

The Reverend's responses are informed by scripture (King James Version for Protestant and Anglican users, Douay-Rheims for Catholic users, with the Apocrypha included for Anglican users) and by widely recognised tradition, but those responses are generated by AI and may be wrong, incomplete, or at odds with the official teaching of your tradition. Where our response conflicts with the authoritative teaching of your church, your church's teaching takes priority.

7. Responses can be wrong

Like all AI, Ready Reverend can get things wrong. It may:

  • quote a Bible passage inexactly
  • misattribute a teaching
  • give theologically imprecise or incorrect answers
  • phrase something pastorally unhelpfully
  • miss important context in what you said

We work hard to reduce these cases through testing, careful prompt design, and retrieval of actual Bible text, but we cannot eliminate them. Treat the Reverend as a thoughtful starting point, not a final authority.

8. Discretion with sensitive topics

Ready Reverend is configured to engage warmly and honestly with difficult topics — grief, doubt, relationships, sexuality, addiction, suffering — from within a Christian frame. It is not configured to:

  • encourage violence, self-harm, or illegal activity under any circumstances
  • provide practical instructions for harmful rituals, extreme fasting, exorcism, or similar
  • accept or hear confessions (it will refer you to a priest)
  • engage with occult or conspiratorial material beyond redirecting to scripture

If you ever receive a response that does any of these things, please report it to support@readyreverend.com so we can investigate and improve.

9. One last thing

We made Ready Reverend because we believe there is real value in having a patient, thoughtful, scripture-grounded voice available when the parish office is closed and the question will not wait until Sunday. Use it in that spirit, and please — when the question is big, when the grief is heavy, when the crisis is real — talk to a human.