‘Bless me, Father, for I have tweeted’

It’s amazing what we can do with our iPhones: make calls, return e-mails, schedule
meetings, file notes, take photos, keep grocery lists, get wake-up calls, time a five-minute egg, check the weather, listen to music, watch a movie, get directions,
play games, invest in stock.

But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Now, with the iPhone, you can even save your soul!
Yes, the Catholic Church is out with a new iPhone app to help you confess your sins.

For Catholics, confession has always been a scary ordeal. You rack your brain, trying
to remember how many times you did how many things wrong. You go into this black
box with somebody you don’t know and can’t see on the other side of a screen, and
tell him your worst secrets. Only to walk out and remember all the things you forgot
to tell him. Should I go back? Will I burn I hell? It’s humiliating. It’s torture.

But no longer. For just $1.99, Confession: A Roman Catholic App, will take the guesswork
out and make it easy. The app will first help you prepare for the sacrament of confession
by reminding you of the Ten Commandments and, depending on your age or station in
life, by offering you a list of what sins you might have committed.

Under the Fourth Commandment, for example, children might be asked: “Did I keep
my room clean and pick up my socks?” Or, as Maureen Dowd reports in The New York Times, a 15-year old girl might
look up the Sixth Commandment and face the question: “Do I not treat my body or
other people’s bodies with purity and respect?”

Grown-ups, under the Sixth Commandment, get more serious treatment. Men and women
both, as might be expected by the Catholic Church, are asked: “Have I been guilty
of any homosexual activity?” While a 33-year old married man is asked to check the
box: “Have I been guilty of masturbation?” (What? Masturbation’s a sin?)

Unfortunately, the iPhone alone can’t wipe out your sins. The church insists you
still have to see a priest for absolution (after all, can’t put too many priests
out of work). But you can take your iPhone with you into the confessional, read
off the list of sins you’ve prepared, type in the number of Hail Marys or Our Fathers
the priest tells you to say for penance — and then, just in case you forgot the
words, read the prayers right off the text conveniently provided in your iPhone
app. Praise the Lord!

And don’t worry. You’re not committing a sacrilege by making a high-tech confession.
The Confession App, developed by three young Catholic men from South Bend, Ind.,
has been given an imprimatur (the first ever for a mobile app) by Bishop Kevin Rhoades
of the Diocese of Fort Wayne. And it’s even received the official blessing of Pope
Benedict XVI, who last spring encouraged Catholics to find new ways to connect their
faith with today’s new technology.

This is just the first step, of course. Watch. It won’t be long before the need
to visit the confessional itself disappears. As fast as Apple releases its next
version of iPhone, you’ll be able simply to punch in your sins, send the priest
an e-mail, and get an e-mail back with your penance. You can store your sins in
your iPhone and compare your progress, or lack of, from month to month. You can
even tweet them to your friends.

In fact, you can bet the pope’s cute little red shoes somebody out there is working
on another app right now to take the place of going to church at all. Why bother
getting dressed and leaving the house on Sunday morning when you can download the
liturgy, sign along with the hymns, and even put money in the collection — at SundayMass.com?

As a Catholic, and a former altar boy and seminarian, I must say it makes me proud
to see the Catholic Church be the first to embrace the iPhone. But what still puzzles
me is: How can the same church be so forward-thinking in one area — and yet so backward
when it comes to celibacy and ordination of female priests? If only the Catholic
Church were as open about sexuality as it is about technology.