Guess what everyone?  The Catholic Church isn’t always the ‘backwards thinking’, ‘old-fashioned’, ‘blind-to-new-ways’ institution that many like to accuse Her of!  First of all, sticking to your guns and standing up for the right thing, may not always be envogue, but right it right.  Saying life is precious and should be protected 100% of the time from conception to natural death, for instance, is one of those ‘right’ things. Saying that it is okay to be chaste and virtuous is another one of those ‘right’ things as well. [No kids, everyone is NOT doing IT!]

Well, the Catholic Church has joined the iPhone revolution.  In the NY Daily News, this article was released on February 7, 2011: http://www.nydailynews.com/tech_guide/2011/02/07/2011-02-07_forgive_me_iphone_new_app_okayed_by_catholic_church.html.  The article says, ‘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”‘.  It’s not confession on the ‘net’.  You still have to get absolution from a priest, but it helps those who haven’t taken part in the sacrament in quite some time and might be timid about what to say and when to say it.  I think it should be free though and not cost $1.99, especially since you can find the same information for free by surfing the internet for about 3 minutes.

My next question would be, do you think it will work?  Do you think an application on the iPhone would bring a long-lost sheep back to the fold?  Well, apparently, it already has.  The article mentions a gentleman who worked with the app and came back to the sacrament after a 20-year ‘hiatus’ from confession.  Welcome home, brother!

Another falacy that I’d like to shoot down is that the Catholic Church is against stem cell research.  That is NOT true.  The stem cells obtained from adults are perfectly acceptable.  The stem cells obtained from an aborted child are not – for obvious reasons that common sense should aleady have provided you. 

In a second article from the NY Daily News, this one from May 25, 2010, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/05/25/2010-05-25_vactican_supports_adult_stem_cell_therapy_project_with_nycbased_company.html, it states, ‘To prove the point, [the Vatican] launched a first-ever joint initiative with a Manhattan-based company that’s researching adult stem cell therapies — and pledged $1 million in funding to seal the deal’.  The stem cells are obtained from an adult’s bone marrow. The company being supported by the Vatican is called NeoStem (NYSE: NBS ) www.neostem.com.  

Three cheers for science and technology!  May the advances in these two areas keep progressing so that human beings can find forgiveness and healing while leaving the sin and guilt behind!  AMEN!

God Bless You!

Deneen