“Forgive me Father for I have sinned” is something typically only said in a church and in front of a priest — not typed, saved and sent on a cell phone. Or is it?

Catholic confession, known as a sacrament and personal display of humility, has recently been updated by Apple in a way to help prepare one for such an intimate and at times nerve-racking experience. Namely, there’s an app for it. Confused? Don’t be, you are not alone. Adrienne Fair, sophomore in FAA, was initially just as mystified until she decided to debunk the misconception herself. After doing her research, Fair claimed confidently that the new application for the iPhone approved by the Church, Confession: A Roman Catholic App, was in a no way, shape or form a replacement for face-to-face confession. Every Catholic figuratively holding their phones with a question mark stamped on their foreheads can put them down and take a sigh of relief.

“At first I was like ‘wait, what?’ but now I’ve come to understand the app as a good thing,” Fair said.

Simply put, it’s a way for people, for anyone, to prepare for confession and ease the examination of one’s conscious, she explained. Nothing too radical about that. In fact, she noted this change to be comparable to that of hand-held sticky notes stuck on a desk — only difference being now one can carry those sticky notes around with them digitally.

“The app aims to help you better yourself and keep track of your morals. So instead of writing down on a sticky note that you gossiped today and it wasn’t the nicest thing to do, you can just put it on your phone. It’s a reminder,” she said. Similar to Fair, Ben Rahimi, junior in Business, likened the app to something that has already been written down rather than programmed by Little iApps, the creator of the concept.

“It’s just like the how-to pamphlets they have at the Newman Center,” he said.

Considering this, Rahimi believes the app to be unnecessary, though he feels no personal opposition to the new relationship being formed between technology and religion.

After downloading the app himself, Father Anthony Co, assistant chaplain at St. John’s Catholic Newman Center, could not agree more with Rahimi on his comparison to the app resembling the confessional pamphlets available at Newman.

“It teaches confession just like our pamphlets do,” Fr. Co said.

Yet interestingly, Fr. Co explained that for all the misunderstanding the app has been causing, practicing Catholics need not be apprehensive, for they already understand that confession is meant to be experienced through people, not a phone.

“Everyone in the world goes to confession, but not everyone goes to a priest,” Fr. Co said.

Whether one says something in confidence to a best friend, a therapist or a religious figure, people are privy to a natural desire to be free of guilt. This manifests itself in vocalization — not solely typing, pressing send and strictly and internally dealing with personal failings through a cell phone, said Fr. Co.

While the app helps one to prepare for penance, it is merely just that — a tool for preparation, and nothing more. Confessing sins to Father Anthony Co via speed dial, though convenient in theory, is not what the Confession app means to suggest, though it does a great job of confusing its customers to believe the fallacy in the first place.

But Rahimi wants to be clear: “There is no substitute for the real thing.”

What does remain up for debate, is the application’s utility.

“I can see how this is a good, relevant way to engage our tech-savvy generation, I’m just not so sure how useful it is,” Rahimi said.