From its creation in the late 20th century the internet has become a part of our everyday lives. In Catholicism, Confession is a very important ritual for the forgiveness of sins. Now that society is evolving onto the online world, so are the rituals and practices of the Catholic Church. I believe an online Confession app has the authenticity of an offline one, but lacks the effectiveness of the sacrament as it was intended to be.
In order to understand this opinion, you must recognise Smart’s 7 Dimensions, how Catholic Confession is conducted both online and off, the benefits and disadvantages of using either the online or offline version, and the authenticity and effectiveness. The Catholic Confession in an offline form has a particular way of course. At the beginning of the Confession the participant enters the Confession booth in which the priest is sitting on the other side of a wall ready to listen. The priest then asks the participant to say a prayer and then is asked to reflect over their previous sins.
The priest then asks God to forgive the participant of their sins and gives the participant a penance – a form of working to get your sins forgiven. The participant is given several prayers to say, and once the prayers have been said, the participant is forgiven. Rather different to this, the online Confession App is conducted through an application on your iPhone or iPad. Instead of talking to a priest and telling them your sins, you simply sit there and go through a list of the 12 commandments, and tick all the sins that you have committed.
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This way you are not truly confessing your sins to another party, you are simply ticking a list and withholding the sins to yourself. By means of authenticity, the online complies with the standards of the offline version, although the effectiveness which the offline version contains is lacking. As an aid to help understand what a religion is comprised of, Ninian Smart, a Scottish writer and university educator, came up with 7 features which would define what a religion should include.
These 7 features include the Doctrinal and Philosophical Dimension, Narrative or Mythological Dimension, the Ethical and Legal Dimension, the Practical and Ritual Dimension, the Experiential and Emotional Dimension, the Social and Institutional Dimension and the Material Dimension. These dimensions collaborate with each other to form the basis on which a ritual lies. In the Catholic sacrament of confession, these dimensions all play an important part which contributes to the outcome of the ritual.
The Doctrinal and Philosophical dimension describes the dimension which incorporates the intellectual components of religions. The Narrative or Mythological dimension is the dimension which makes up the stories of religions, for example the story of creation or dreamtime stories. The Ethical and Legal dimension concerns what is good and bad, and what you must do if you do something against the religion. The Practical and Ritual dimension is what the adherents of a religion do as a part of the religion, such as prayer and ritual.
The Experiential and Emotional dimension focuses on the subjective and emotional side of the religion or what happens on the inside. The Social and Institutional side of the religion is how people’s interactions are planned within the religion. The final dimension, Material, is the physical forms of the religion, such as a church or a statue. Although these 7 dimensions aid the process of determining whether or not an action is a ritual, confession is already known as a ritual because it is one of Catholicism’s 7 Sacraments.
To determine the authenticity of the Catholic Confession app, the advantages and disadvantages of each would need to be stated. The advantages of having the Catholic Confession app on your iPhone or iPad are the ease of access and portability. The app also makes it easy to understand what the participant of the confession should be reflecting upon in their lives, by providing an understanding of the types of sins which are in need of forgiveness.
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Voodoo Fon is spoken by over half the people of Benin and it is the mother tongue of voodoo. In Fon the root word for voodoo is that means spirit or god. Voodoo had its origins over 350 years ago in West Africa. In fact All ada, a small town in Benin, is often called the 'cradle of voodoo'. In 1996, January 10 th became National Voodoo Day in honor of its followers that make up 65% of Benin ...
The disadvantages of the app include the lack of compliance with Smarts’ 7 dimensions, the ability to be easily distracted by other apps or interruptions, the lack of spiritual significance. The authenticity and effectiveness of the Catholic Confession app can be determined using Lovats or Van Genneps set of steps, and also Smarts’ 7 Dimensions. The sacrament of reconciliation can be easily identified as complying with Lovats set of steps for a ritual, although the same cannot be said for the iPhone version.
For the entrance stage, the confession app has a login screen which users can log in on. There is not much preparation, however, because the user does not reflect upon their sins; they simply check boxes. There is no climax either, nor a celebration. The return is when the user logs off and continues ith their ordinary life. To determine whether or not the Confession App for iPhone was an effective and legitimate alternative to the communal alternative, an interview was conducted with Clairvaux MacKillop College campus minister, Miss Stadhams.
In this interview, Miss Stadhams states that the app could not replace confession in the church, but could help to guide people and add value to the sacrament. She also states that the Confession app is confessing in a very private manner which isn’t what a sacrament is meant to be. A sacrament is meant to be celebrated in a community, not privately. From taking these facts and opinions into account I believe that the confession app for iPhone does not meet the standards of confession inside the church, and that it should not be used as an alternative. Thank you for listening.
