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iTunes salvation: Roman Catholic Church approves Confession app
Are you a sinner? Don't worry, there's an app for that. The Roman Catholic Church has approved a recent iTunes addition called Confession, a $1.99 app that bills itself as "the perfect aid for every penitent." As you can see above, it lets you pick a commandment and tick off all your sins, keeping a running tally to bring into the confessional with you -- a sort of anti-tasklist, if you will. Can't find your particular misstep? No problem! You're able to add your own, custom dastardly deeds, filling in those gaps the app's authors didn't think anyone would fill. Now all it needs is a random sin selector: shake the phone to instantly get a wicked suggestion. That certainly could make boring Thursday nights at the dormitory a little more exciting.
Head of Roman Catholic Church in England warns against the dangers of SMS, email, and social networking
In case you haven't been apprised of the situation, your addiction to texting and email is ruining your relationship... with god. According to Vincent Nichols, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, modern friendships built around (or involving) heavy SMS volley, electronic mail correspondences, and social networking sites create "transient relationships" which put users at the risk of suicide. Yes, suicide. According to the British man of the cloth, using electronic communication to build friendships is causing humanity to lose "the ability to build interpersonal communication that's necessary for living together." Sure, it may sound like heavy FUD talk, but there is sense in some of his points. For instance, the Archbishop of Westminster believes that social networking sites encourage people to concentrate on their number of friends rather than build actual relationships, and they tend to view that number as a commodity. Anyone who's seen the growth of Facebook and MySpace shouldn't have trouble making that connection, but when it comes to SMS and email, your friendship has likely moved on, and lumping that kind of one-to-one communication in with the broad relationships of social networking sites seems like an unfair characterization. We put the question to our typically calm and even-keeled commenter community -- are we doomed, or what?
