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Seventh Sunday of the Year
20 February 2011
Dear Friends in Christ,
Need to go to Confession? There’s an app for that. An iPhone app, that is.
There is now an application called “Confession” available for download in the Apple App Store, and I imagine that in due course there will be other such apps available for Android, Blackberry, and Windows smart phones. When the “Confession” app came to public attention a couple of weeks ago, several media outlets falsely reported that Catholics could now “go to Confession” on their mobile phones. These ludicrous reports conjured up images of Catholics texting their sins to the parish priest and then receiving a penance and absolution back on the phone without ever leaving the comforts of home. This, of course, is absurd and is not at all what the application called “Confession” is designed to do.
Before going to Confession, each penitent (the proper term for a Catholic receiving the Sacrament of Penance) should examine his or her life in the light of the Gospel and the Law of God revealed in the Ten Commandments. Because this review should be thorough and detailed, printed guides have been available for many centuries to assist the penitent in preparing to make a good Confession, and the new iPhone app stands in this venerable tradition as a digital help to the examination of conscience. The chief virtue of such apps and of e-readers in general is that you no longer have to carry books with you; if you have your phone, you have the needed text in your hand. I have download the “Confession” app on my phone, and I do believe that most Catholics with a smart phone would find such a digital guide a useful thing to have at hand. Other guides to prepare for a good Confession are available online or in most prayerbooks of the sort found at St. Anthony’s Catholic Book Store on Congaree Road next to Haywood Mall. But however you prepare to go to Confession, receiving the Sacrament of Penance worthily and regularly is an essential part of following the Lord Jesus as a faithful disciple.
For a full exposition of Catholic doctrine about the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, please see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 1422 to 1498. The entire second part of the Catechism is devoted to the seven sacraments and is entitled “The Celebration of the Christian Mystery.” Each of the sacraments is an instrument of grace used by the Lord Jesus to unite us to Himself and transform us from children of wrath into children of God by grace through faith, and the Sacrament of Penance — which the Risen Christ gave to His Church on Easter Sunday — is God’s ordinary way of restoring us to the life of grace when we sin after our Baptism. Confessions are heard at St. Mary’s by two priests each Wednesday from 5 to 6 pm, by one priest each Saturday from 3.30 to 4.30 pm, and by either priest at anytime by appointment.
Father Newman