There has been a lot of commentary these past days on the new I-Phone app that helps you prepare for confession.
Here is, officially, the stupidest commentary you will see on the subject. Courtesy of, who else, Maureen Dowd.
¶ 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.
¶ Nothing is sacred anymore, even the sacred. And even that most secret ritual of the Roman Catholic faith, the veiled black confessional box.
She goes on to say…
The app also tailors the questions if you sign in as a priest or a “religious.” For instance, if you say you’re a female and try to select “priest” as your vocation, a dialogue box appears that says “sex and vocation are incompatible.” So much for modernity.
Modernity. MoDo is oh so modern. MoDo is so modern that she probably has an I-Phone App for I-Diots to mail in their NY Times column with little or no thought or effort involved. On second thought….
February 9, 2011 at 6:47 am
silly mo-do, the app is for Catholics!
February 9, 2011 at 11:51 am
I'm facebook friends with one of the creators of this app and he linked to this article last night. In the comments he mentions that Dowd was a good interviewer and very thorough, and while he agrees that they will not likely ever see eye to eye, he said she was fun to talk to.
Even bad press is still press, and if this app gets more Catholics back to confession, I'm all for it.
February 9, 2011 at 2:27 pm
Funny that she even tried to select female and priest. Silly Maureen.
February 9, 2011 at 3:58 pm
Clearly, the program has a bug. If you put in woman + priest it should ask you if you have repented from the excommunication you imposed on yourself from your invalid ordination and been recommunicated. Or whatever the terminology and process is.
February 9, 2011 at 5:11 pm
This seems like a neat little app that naturally the press is misreporting about. If you really want to anger up the blood (and thus have something else to check off) just check out the comments section on any given news story about it. It's so nice to see anti-Catholic bigotry is alive and well.
February 9, 2011 at 10:36 pm
I would love to know if using artificial contraception is in the examen of this app. If you know it, post it.
February 10, 2011 at 10:30 am
Why would anybody select female and priest? That's stupid. Females can't be priests. They don't the genetic make-up to be priest. Only men are allowed in the heigharcy of the church.
February 10, 2011 at 1:20 pm
Yes it is, Blackrep. The exact question (for me) is "Have I used any method of contraception or artificial birth control in my marriage?" It doesn't look to be included for single people, but I guess it's technically covered by "Have I engaged in any sexual activity outside of marriage?"
Sterilization, homosexuality, lustful thoughts, and various other sexual sins are also covered (interestingly, sterilization is under the 5th Commandment, owing to it being a form of self-mutilation, killing a part of oneself.)
The basic examination goes through the 10 Commandments, and has questions related to each. It's slightly customized for each user based on age, vocation, and sex. Children, teens, adults have differently worded questions and different organization. Priests have different obligations from married people, and thus different areas that need examination.
Overall it seems like a good app. It needs some modifications (like ability to note number of times a sin has been committed, and maybe the ability to write notes on each specific question so as to remind the user of particular transgressions), but it's definitely a useful tool.
February 10, 2011 at 1:25 pm
I meant to mention…it also does sanity checks. You can't select female priest, or married 10 year old, or 12 year old religious.