Sorry, Catholics can’t confess via the new iPhone app – Vatican
Catholics cannot confess via iPhone and technology is not a substitute for being present when admitting sins to a priest, the Vatican spokesman said on Wednesday. The statement by Father Federico Lombardi follows the launch of an iPhone application aimed at helping Catholics through confession sanctioned by the Catholic Church in the United States.
“One cannot speak in any way of confessing via iPhone,” Lombardi said on Wednesday, adding that confession required the presence of the penitent and the priest. “This cannot be substituted by any IT application,” Lombardi added.
Read Catherine Hornby’s full report from Rome here. Here’s a link to Vatican Radio’s report.
Some reports on its approval by the Catholic Church in the U.S. suggested confession would now be possible via iPhone. Our original story on this from New York included the following paragraph: The app 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. Catholics still must go to a priest for absolution.
The app got a thorough review from Father Z (aka Fr. John Zuhlsdorf), a popular and very tech-savvy traditional Catholic blogger who provided lots of screenshots, lists of sins and suggestions for Confession 2.0 (check it out here). Bill Donahue of the Catholic League was not amused and scolded the media for what he called “irresponsible” headlines. Here’s his list:
• ”Can’t Make it to Confession? There’s an App for That” • ”Catholic Church Approves Confession by iPhone” • ”Bless Me iPhone for I Have Sinned” • ”Catholic Church Endorses App for Sinning iPhone Users” • ”US Bishop Sanctions Cell Phone in Confession” • ”Forgiveness via iPhone: Church Approves Confession App” • ”New, Church-Approved iPhone Offers Confession On the Go” • ”Confess Your Sins to a Phone in Catholic Church Endorsed App” • ”Catholics Can Now Confess Using iPhone App” • ”Catholic Church Approves Online Confession”
Most of them are clearly wrong. Our headline — “Bless me iPhone for I have sinned”– is tongue-in-cheek and Donahue may not have liked the tone. But it does not state the app can replace the real thing. Right under the headline, there are two lines meant to summarise the story that read:
Bless me iPhone for I have sinned — an app for Catholic confession
An iPhone app aimed at helping Catholics through confession and encouraging lapsed followers back to the faith has been sanctioned by the Catholic Church in the United States.
Confession: A Roman Catholic app, thought to be the first to be approved by a church authority, walks Catholics through the sacrament and contains what the company behind the program describes as a “personalized examination of conscience for each user”.
“Our desire is to invite Catholics to engage in their faith through digital technology,” said Patrick Leinen of the three-man company Little iApps, based in South Bend, Indiana. “Taking to heart Pope Benedict XVI’s message from last years’ World Communications Address, our goal with this project is to offer a digital application that is truly ‘new media at the service of the word.”
The app 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. Catholics still must go to a priest for absolution.
Read the full story by David Sheppard here.
For more on religion and smart phones, see Faith and smart phones commune in religion apps.
U.S. churches could benefit from new community radio law
A tiny nonprofit organization operating a national campaign from the basement of Calvary United Methodist Church in Philadelphia for 12 years to get more non-commercial radio stations approved may soon see its dream come true.
On January 4, the nonprofit Prometheus and other groups seeking to diversify media ownership, scored a victory when President Barack Obama signed into law the Local Community Radio Act. It directs the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the national airwaves, to allow more low-power stations access to the FM radio dial.
Once implemented, the law is expected to result in as many 2,000 new stations, beginning in about 2013. That would more than double the approximately 800 low-power stations currently in operation, compared with around 13,000 commercial stations nationwide. “It makes a lot more room on a medium (FM radio) that a lot of people still use,” said Prometheus founder Pete Tridish.
An increase in community stations could mean more coverage of local issues such as school board meetings, high school football games, health, education, local music, and literacy campaigns. Since about half the existing low-power FM stations are owned by churches, some of the new material is also likely to be religious.
Read the full story by Jon Hurdle here.
from India Insight:
A Republic Day to forget for India’s opposition party
As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh watched India’s 61st Republic Day parade in the New Delhi sunshine on Wednesday morning, senior opposition leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley were in a Jammu prison, where they had spent a night under arrest.
Detained for attempting to lead thousands of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers into India’s northern state of Jammu & Kashmir to provocatively raise the national flag in the state that has been racked by unrest by Muslim separatists opposed to Indian rule, Swaraj and Jaitley’s politically-driven mission had ended in failure.
The BJP appear to have thought that the nationalism-drenched plan to hoist the flag in the centre of Srinagar, the state capital, would galvanize their Hindu support base, and show the ruling Congress party as ineffective in defending the disputed state from separatists who rile against New Delhi’s rule.
Thursday’s media post-mortem strongly suggested that they failed on both counts.
“Omar steals a march as BJP flag mission foiled,” summed up Mail Today on Thursday, as the opposition’s plan to paint the Congress-backed state chief minister as a weak leader spectacularly backfired.
The provocative rhetoric that accompanied the march also risked alienating moderate Hindus and a large section of secular voters, as newspaper editors strongly criticized the brazen attitude to stirring tensions in the unstable region where more than 100 people were killed last year.
Guestview: Editorial independence and an ecumenical news agency
The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Peter Kenny is the former editor-in-chief of ENInews. By Peter Kenny
Maintaining editorial integrity at ENInews, a Geneva-based world-wide news agency run by Ecumenical News International that covers global Christianity and other religions, is hard work. Although church groupings and their partner organizations founded ENInews, editorial independence is often linked to that which is the root of all evil — money.
And that was one of the root causes of ENInews being forced to suspend production for a time at the beginning of the year. It has resumed services and now has an interim editor and is looking for an editor/manager for a one-year term, who will have no office. In 2011 it will also likely face another big cut from its biggest sponsor.
When in May 2010 the biggest founding member of ENInews, the World Council of Churches, suddenly said it would drastically cut funding due to a budget deficit of millions of dollars it was trying to fend off, the news agency was already running with little room to manoeuver.
The new management and editorial team is operating with vastly reduced resources and there is talk that the WCC’s financial predicament will force it to deliver another big cut next year, or even to cease support totally.
In every part of the planet, news subscribers have in recent years bought in a new media trading philosophy — news should be provided free. This may be good for consumers, in the very short term, but makes forging business models for news providers’ challenging. Dwindling paid-for subscriptions can’t pay all the bills, so the modern smaller agency that covers specialised news needs benefactors or sponsors. Yet, if a sponsor is hit with its own financial big hole, as happened to ENInews, it can destabilise the news flow.
Over the Christmas and New Year period, ENInews took the unprecedented step of suspending its news service for longer than the normal holiday break. After a struggle in its governing body, a new management and a temporary editor began operating a reduced service that relies less on news and more on straight press releases. Insiders say the WCC’s financial predicament and a new policy on programmes will force it to deliver another big cut next year, or even to cease support totally. A part time new editor is being sought, who will have no office or agency HQ.
Russia to launch Muslim TV channel to promote tolerance
Russia will soon launch a Muslim television channel in the hope it will foster tolerance after the capital saw some of the worst clashes since the fall of the Soviet Union, state-run media have reported.
Proposed by President Dmitry Medvedev two years ago, the satellite channel will go on air in February or March across Russia, home to some 20 million Muslims, or a seventh of the country’s population.
“We believe it is necessary to cultivate a spirit of tolerance towards representatives of other faiths,” RIA news agency on Tuesday quoted Russia’s Chief Mufti Ravil Gaynutdin as saying, adding programmes will be designed for a young audience.
Neo-nationalist movements have been gaining ground over the past year, shocking authorities and many Russians. At rallies, some chanted slogans such as “Russia is for Russians!”
Hindu and Muslim Bollywood stars urge calm before Indian mosque verdict
It’s a sign of how explosive the Ayodhya mosque verdict in India could be that several Hindu and Muslim film stars in Bollywood have issued a public appeal for calm once the decision is announced. As we’ve posted here on FaithWorld, an Indian court is due to announce on Thursday whether Hindus or Muslims own land around the Babri mosque, which Hindu nationalists demolished in 1992. The Hindu-Muslim riots that followed killed some 2,000 people.
Bollywood, the Bombay (now Mumbai)-based Hindi-language film industry, walks a tightrope in making mass-audience films in what may be the most religiously diverse country in the world. Some of the most popular Bollywood stars are Muslim, although the majority of viewers are Hindu (Muslims make up 13% of the Indian population). Like the actors and actresses in this appeal, many of them publicly work, play and love (see here) across the religious divide. But tensions like those after the Ayodhya mosque riots — including riots in Mumbai itself — have left their scars. Some Muslim writers (see here and here) say suspicion of Muslims is a recurring theme in Bollywood films.
In the video below, the stars mostly speak in Hindi sprinkled with occasional English words. That’s nothing unusual and can be useful as well. For example, when actress and former Miss World Priyanka Chopra says (at 00:48) that “in our country all religions have been living together for so long…”, she uses the English word “religion.” That was a neutral alternative to local words she might have used with either a Hindu (dharma) or Muslim (din) background.
The other speaker, actor-director Farhan Akhtar, urged the media not to “sensationalise” the news of the verdict and switched to English for the rest of his message.
Ranbir Kapoor, Ajay Devgan, Farhan Akhtar, Zayed Khan, Anil Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra cooperated with Mumbai Police for the appeal, delivered last Thursday evening when the verdict was originally expected the following day. The national release of “Anjaana, Anjaani,” a romantic film starring Ranbir Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra, has been put off until Oct. 1 to avoid opening during any tensions.
Russian Orthodox say “no breakthrough” at Catholic-Orthodox talks last week
The Russian Orthodox Church said on Tuesday there was no “breakthrough” at a Catholic-Orthodox theological dialogue meeting in Vienna last week that ended with reports of promising progress on the thorny issue of the role of the Catholic pope. The statement may be more interesting for what it doesn’t say than what it does. It’s not clear which reports Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the “foreign minister” of the Moscow Patriarchate, was referring to when he said that “contrary to allegations in the press, the Orthodox-Catholic Commission meeting in Vienna has made no ‘breakthrough’ whatsoever.”
Did any media report a breakthrough? Not that I’ve seen. Is it possible that Hilarion was actually referring to the cautiously upbeat statements given at a final news conference by Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamon and Archbishop Kurt Koch, the top Vatican official for Christian unity?
Hilarion was in Vienna last week but did not appear at the news conference. Metropolitan John, who spoke for the Orthodox side, is affiliated with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, the spiritual leader of all Orthodox which Moscow seems to compete with for a leadership role. Could this have played a part?
The issue was the role the pope played in the millennium before the Great Schism of 1054. At the 2007 dialogue meeting in Ravenna, the Orthodox confirmed that the pope, as the bishop of Rome, was traditionally the first of the five ancient patriarchs. At the news conference in Vienna, the two delegation heads said that Catholics and Orthodox could eventually come to see themselves as “sister churches” if they could agree to translate that traditional role of the pope into a modern understanding of how the churches related to each other.
In his statement, Hilarion said: “For the Orthodox participants, it is clear that in the first millennium the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome was exercised only in the West, while in the East, the territories were divided between four Patriarchs – those of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.”
“The bishop of Rome did not exercise any direct jurisdiction in the East in spite of the fact that in some cases Eastern hierarchs appealed to him as arbiter in theological disputes. These appeals were not systematic and can in no way be interpreted in the sense that the bishop of Rome was seen in the East as the supreme authority in the whole Universal Church. It is hoped that at the next meetings of the Commission, the Catholic side will agree with this position which is confirmed by numerous historical evidence.”
John didn’t elaborate on these points at the news conference, so it’s not clear if he might disagree with Hilarion’s view. Koch said that “unity without the Bishop of Rome is unimaginable. That’s because the issue of the Bishop of Rome is not just an organisational question, but also a theological one. The dialogue about just how this unity should be shaped must be continued intensively.” That means there are still years of discussions ahead of these theologians, but it doesn’t seem to contradict their message that progress was made.
FBI tells US Mohammed cartoonist to ‘go ghost’ – report
A Seattle cartoonist who stirred up a religious storm with a tongue-in-cheek encouragement to draw images of the Muslim prophet Mohammed has gone into hiding after a threat to her safety.
Cartoonist Molly Norris, who published an illustration in April on her website entitled “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day,” was told by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to “go ghost,” according to Seattle Weekly, where Morris was a regular contributor.
“On the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI,” Norris is “moving, changing her name and essentially wiping away her identity,” a Seattle Weekly report said on Thursday.
The Seattle office of the FBI did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Feisty debates between Catholics and secularists before pope visit to Britain
If you like debates about religion but were turned off by the uproar in the United States over Koran-burning and the New York Islamic centre, take a look at the rhetorical duelling that’s been going on in Britain ahead of Pope Benedict’s visit there starting on Thursday. For the past few weeks, the leading lights of secularist and atheist thought have been hammering away at the Catholic Church, playing up its sins like the sexual abuse crisis and arguing that the pope doesn’t deserve the honour of a state visit. A quick Google search digs out plenty of them.
On the other side, a group of lay Catholics has formed a speakers’ bureau ready to face off with the critics and defend the pope and the Church. They’re a kind of rapid reaction force, ready to appear anywhere to refute the secularists and atheists. The result has been a feisty in-your-face exchange providing the pro and contra arguments for many current disputes over the Catholic Church. Some arguments could be criticised as too emotional or even irrational, but boring they’re not.
Catholic Voices, the speakers’ bureau that’s been putting up sparring partners for the Church’s critics, must already rank as one of the big innovations of this papal tour. Popes are no strangers to protests when they visit foreign countries, but the Vatican and the local Church hierarchy usually ignore the critics or give cautious responses. Under Pope Benedict, Vatican public relations has been so badly organised that both he and his aides have often provided even more fuel for criticism. Given the strong and mostly critical interest the media would show in the pope’s visit, these speakers – journalists, lawyers, students and a few clergy – decided the Church needed a more professional operation if it was to get its message across.
Catholic Voices coordinator Austen Ivereigh (photo at far right in screengrab from Sky TV debate, click on image for video), a former deputy editor of The Tablet and spokesman for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, gave me his thoughts about the project and how it’s been doing:
“We thought that our model of a ‘media-friendly, studio-ready, ego-free’ speakers would work well for both the Church and the 24-hours news media, but we’ve been amazed at its success. A big part of the success, we think, is that we making ourselves available to talk about absolutely anything –authoritatively, but in straightforward human language. I think the media have been really impressed that ‘ordinary’ Catholics have been standing up and rebutting these critiques – rather than polemicists or professional talking heads (or indeed bishops). We haven’t replaced those, of course, but have offered another kind of “voice” – deliberately non-expert, but very well briefed – alongside the usual commentators and spokespeople.
“It’s the fruit of six months of intensive briefings on hot topics, and media skills training. It’s been enormously satisfying to see a group of 20-odd ‘ordinary’ Catholics – not leaders of Church organisations, but people with jobs, generally in their 20s and 30s – appear in studios and carry off an effective 3-minute live broadcast interview. I think we’ve presented a much more ‘real’ face of the Church than the media are used to.
“The ferocity of the criticism directed at the Pope and the state nature of the visit – a lot of it deeply irrational, and clumsy in its allegations – has kept us in demand; journalists have been looking for responses that are straightforward and human, and which reflect attitudes in the Catholic community.”
He’s a creepy protector of child abusers and should be arrested and jailed.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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What if a priest answered the confessor with the proper penance.