LITTLE iAPPS - CONFESSION: A ROMAN CATHOLIC APP

From Beliefblog:

Yes, the Roman Catholic Church still supports the new app designed to help Catholics make confession. To a point.

The Vatican qualified its support for "Confession: A Roman Catholic App,” on Wednesday, a day after the program’s developer announced it was the first app to have official church sanction.

Thanks to Whiteycat.

“It is essential to understand well the sacrament of penitence requires the personal dialogue between the penitent and the confessor and the absolution by the confessor,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told reporters on Wednesday. “This cannot in any way be substituted by a technology application.”

“One cannot talk in any way about a ‘confession via iPhone,’ ” Lombardi said.

Eons ago, we worked from lists of sins against the Ten Commandments. In the age of technology, why not an iPhone app? I used the lists to remind myself of my wickedness and then committed my sins to memory for use in the confessional, but, on one occasion, a couple of my friends tried to take their lists into the confession box, but it was so dark that they could not read off their sins. I suppose the iPhone has a light, which would eliminate that problem, but then a good many folks don't use the confessional any longer and prefer a face to face experience of confessing their sins.

For good or for ill, it's been years since I've made a formal confession to a priest. I confess to God and, at times, to a wise and trustworthy friend. My last experience of confession was embarrassing for me and, I believe, for the priest - not because of the sins I confessed, because there was nothing extraordinary in their content, but just the experience itself was awkward, and I've not tried again.

Thanks to Ann V.

UPDATE: From Maureen Dowd in the New York Times:

Our Father, who art in pixels,
linked be Thy name,
Thy Web site come, Thy Net be done,
on Explorer as it is on Firefox.
Give us this day our daily app,
and forgive us our spam,
as we forgive those
who spam against us,
and lead us not into aggregation,
but deliver us from e-vil. Amen.

Thanks to Whitecat.