An App a Day Keeps the Priest Away

Bless me iPhone for I have sinned.

I'm not a Catholic, but I portray a husband married to one in real life. In that role I have found some of the Catholic Church's ways of doing things strange. Of course, that is because I wasn't brought up Catholic. I never converted, but honored my wife's wishes that our daughter be brought up in that faith.

This news has REALLY given me pause to vigorously scratch my head and say "what the ... heck?"

Said Patrick Leinen of the company Little iApps based in South bend Indiana, "Our desire is to invite Catholics to engage in their faith through digital technology. Taking to heart Pope Bendict XVI's message from last year's World Communications Address, our goal with this project is to offer a digital application that is truly 'new media at the service of the world.'"

Although it has been sanctioned by the Catholic Church in the United States, it is not designed to replace going to confession but to help Catholics through the act, which generally involves admitting sins to a priest in a confessional booth. They will still have to go a priest for absolution.

The Catholic Church has sanctioned an app that allows its faithful to confess their sins via iPhone! Interesting that the Church still admonishes birth control, but yet is willing to embrace a technology that would allow someone to be sitting on a bar stool and text a confession. Who would've ever thought that a pub could one day serve as a confessional booth?

I can almost visualize some man's possible text or tweeter confessions:

"Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I lusted for the cocktail waitress."

"Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I have committed adultery with a girl I met at a bar.

Women would want to use this app too.

"Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I picked up that stud bartender and slept with him last night."

I wonder, what kind of absolution would a priest give to those confessions? Forgive me, for I couldn't help this:

"Have two Bloody Marys and sin no more."

What other technology might the church accept next? Automated Confession Booths?

Well, how can I poke fun at a Confession iPhone app with out posting some "borrowed" Confessional jokes?

☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺

There was this catholic teenager who goes to confession, and after

confessing to having an affair with a teenage girl is told by the

priest that he cannot forgive this terrible sin if the boy doesn't

tell who the girl is.

The boy says "Aw father, I promised not to tell."

"Was it Mary Particia, the Butcher's daughter?"

"Come on father, no it wasn't and I wont tell."

"Was it Mary Elizabeth, the printer's daughter?"

"No, and I still won't tell."

"Was it Mary Francis, the baker's daughter?"

"No, it wasn't and I really can't tell you who."

"Well, son, I have no choice but to excommunicate you for six months."

The boy's friend meets him afterwards outside the church and asks him
how it went:

"Well, I got six months on the outside, but three good leads!"

☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺
A drunken man staggers in to a Catholic church, sits down in a confession
box and says nothing.

The bewildered priest coughs to attract his attention, but still the man
says nothing.

The priest then knocks on the wall three times in a final attempt to get
the man to speak.

Finally, the drunk replies: "No use knockin' mate, there's no paper in
this one either."

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