I’d thought about another post for today, but then my eyes fell on this headline:
“‘Bless me, Father’
Going to confession? There’s an app for that.”

Apparently there is an new iPhone application that allows for a customizable examination of conscience. Don’t remember your sins? Can’t recall the Third Commandment? No problem. Just whip out your cell phone and it will walk you through the process.

It works like this: You enter your name, age, sex, vocation and date of last confession (I imagine that one is key) and the program takes it from there. The program provides three versions of the Act of Contrition, the prayer you say after receiving the sacrament, including one in Latin. (Venn diagram assignment: Map iPhone users with those who say their prayers in Latin. Hmmm.)

The device also acts as a digital notebook where you can jot down sins as you remember them. Of course, privacy is guaranteed. “Once you go to confession, all that information is wiped out,” said one of the designers.

I think back to my first confession at age seven: my head swimming, clammy palms, the close smell of the confessional, the ominous sliding sound that meant the grate was open and my confession could begin, so nervous I could barely eke out the words, “Bless me father, for I have sinned.”

Perhaps I was born a few decades too soon.