The Gentle Art of Holy Surrender

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 according to a story on Reuters. 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. Pope Benedict provided inspiring words during the installation of five new archbishops recently at the Vatican and called upon them to "throw out the nets of the Gospel into the stormy seas of our time" to draw men and women out of "the salty waters of death." The Pope told the five during his homily that "the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Although it may seem that a large part of the modern world, of the men and women of today, turn their backs on God and consider faith as a thing of the past, there is still a longing that justice, peace and love will finally be established, that poverty and suffering will be overcome, that mankind may find happiness," he said. As bishops, the Gospel passage on the harvest sheds light on two of their missions: to work to bring about God's will on earth and to cooperate with Christ along the way, said the Pope. The line from the Acts of the Apostles, "they devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers," gives them guidelines for being pastors, he explained. Devotion and constancy are essential because "only where there is stability can there also be growth," he said. Communion with the Apostles and God is another task of a pastor, said the Pope. "May this chain of communion not be broken!" he exclaimed. "The essence of apostolic succession is to maintain our communion with the people who visibly and tangibly met with the Lord." Unity in the Church must be ensured, he said. For the "breaking of the bread," he told them that the "core" of the Church and of the Christian being is the Eucharist. "The Lord gives himself to us; the Risen One enters my intimate self and wishes to transform me, bringing me into profound communion with Him." Pope Benedict also spoke about prayer, telling the archbishops that it is personal, but "never an exclusively private affair. Only in community "can we be children of our Father, to whom the Lord taught us to pray." Benedict XVI concluded his homily with a call to action aimed at the new archbishops. He told them to "throw out the nets of the Gospel into the stormy seas of our time, to obtain the adherence of men and women to Christ, so as to draw them out ... from the salty waters of death and from the dark where the light of heaven does not reach. You must bring them onto the earth, to live in communion with Jesus Christ."