Catholic Confession App

How can technology spark religious reflection — including the not-so-exciting task of seeing where you’ve gone wrong lately?  There are plenty of smartphone apps to help the user take control of their weight, medical conditions, and work schedule — but what about their spiritual development?

A Catholic app-developer out of South Bend, Indiana published the Confession app that is meant to provide personal self-examination of the user’s conscience.  In the Catholic tradition, a person is supposed to confess their sins regularly to a priest, who will then tell the person what prayers or acts of contrition to perform to clean their conscience.

But numbers of Catholics who actually attend Confession has grown extremely limited — the App makers think this may come from the ‘intimidation factor’ of seeing the priest.  Their app is supposed to limit the intimidation, by letting a person reflect and prepare before going to church.

The app provides the 10 commandments as a checklist.  The user can go commandment by commandment to reflect on their own behavior — and for each commandment there are some practical questions that can prompt greater self-examination.  It aims to be a religious mirror and instigator of penitence — a battery-powered conscience in your hand.

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