Louis C.K. has confessed. Now it’s time for contrition.

Confession makes for great television. One episode of Louis C.K.’s self-distributed series “Horace & Pete” consists entirely of an intimate, 40-minute conversation between Louis C.K.’s character and his ex-wife, played by Laurie Metcalf. They speak in long, unbroken monologues across a small table at a bar. The first nine minutes are shot in closeup on Metcalf as she recounts, in slow, unsparing detail, how she began having an affair with her new father-in-law.

Louis C.K.’s work has always been about confession. Now that five women—Dana Min Goodman, Julia Wolov, Rebecca Corry, Abby Schachner and an anonymous woman—have gone on the record with The New York Times accusing him of pressuring them to watch or listen to him masturbate without their consent, Louis C.K. needs to attempt something in real life that is much more difficult: contrition.

In a statement released Friday afternoon, C.K. said, “The stories are true,” and expressed regret for the “hurt” he caused.

In a statement released Friday afternoon, C.K. said, “The stories are true,” and expressed regret for the “hurt” he caused.

As I wrote in an essay for America in 2015, much of Louis C.K.’s comedy explores the perversity of human desires. It is about knowing the right thing but doing wrong anyway. I compared his view of sin to that of St. Augustine, who wrote in his Confessions the classic one-liner, “Give me chastity, Lord, but not yet.”

In wrestling with perverse desires on stage and screen, Louis C.K. took on a theme that is universally applicable but seldom explored. Now it appears that he was wrestling with his own very specific desires, too.

He joked constantly about masturbation. He joked about men’s desire to ejaculate indiscriminately onto women. On his sitcom “Louie,” he played out a scene of chasing a woman around his character’s apartment, which viewers could read as an attempted sexual assault.

Louis C.K.’s comedy explores the perversity of human desires. It is about knowing the right thing but doing wrong anyway.

All that is confession, laying bare the darkness of the human heart. The work of examining one’s conscience is essential to living a moral life. But it is not enough.

Louis C.K. has from time to time explored contrition at the fuzzy boundary between life and art. Over several years, the comedian drifted away from employing a homophobic slur. For years, Louis C.K. often used the word “faggot” in his act, even leading off his 2008 comedy special “Chewed Up” with a harsh bit built around the word.

Two years later, he wrote a scene for “Louie” in which a gay comic, Rick Crom, calls out the other comedians sitting at a poker table for saying “faggot” onstage. Louis C.K.’s character asks his friend if he shouldn’t use the word in his act. Crom answers with moral honesty:

You might want to know that every gay man in America has probably had that word shouted at them when they’re being beaten up, sometimes many times, sometimes by a lot of people all at once. So, when you say it, it kind of brings that all back up. But, you know, by all means, use it. Get your laughs. But, you know, now you know what it means.

After hearing these words, Louis C.K.’s character shifts his gaze downward. He looks chastened.

The scene both is and isn’t Louis C.K.’s admission of guilt and regret. It is still a scene. “Louie” is autobiographical, but the character remains a character.

At some point, though, Louis C.K. stopped using the word onstage.

Louis C.K.’s abandonment of “faggot” does not absolve him of the behavior he stands credibly accused of right now. None of the moral awareness in his work minimizes any psychological or professional damage his actions caused the five women.

Only those women themselves can absolve him. For that to happen, he will first have to name his wrongdoing, apologize to the victims, accept the consequences and resolve to do better.

It is too late for Louis C.K. to be the model of male feminism. It is not too late for him to be a model of contrition.

Moving from confession to contrition will mean crossing that final hurdle between what Louis C.K. admits in his art and what he admits in his life. It will mean closing the distance between knowing the right thing and doing it—a step Augustine, who admits to having been callous toward women, says people must take.

On some level, Louis C.K. seems to know that. Abby Schachner, who told The Times she was once on the phone with him while he masturbated, says he offered her an apology, which she accepted. Rebecca Corry, who accuses him of saying he wanted to masturbate in front of her, says he botched an apology to her, leading her to think he had committed other sexual misdeeds.

It is too late for Louis C.K. to be the model of male feminism some commentators called him. It is not too late for him to be a model of contrition.

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The Editors

In the wake of all the recent revelations of sexual harassment, abuse and assault by prominent and powerful men, the entertainment and media industries need such a model. In fact, all men need one. We each need to make a searching examination of conscience, to understand how we have harmed and diminished women at work and elsewhere and to try to make right what we can.

By the end of the confessional “Horace and Pete” episode, Laurie Metcalf’s character knows she must admit her affair to her husband. She knows it will destroy him. She also knows she will not call it off. She does not resolve to sin no more or avoid the near occasions of sin. Without contrition, her confession is incomplete.

For the sake of the five women accusing him of sexual misconduct and for the sake of countless other women in the entertainment industry and beyond, I hope Louis C.K. can take the necessary step his characters can often see but rarely take.