The Catholic Church has approved an iPhone app that helps guide worshippers through confession:

The Confession program has gone on sale through iTunes for £1.19 ($1.99).

Described as “the perfect aid for every penitent”, it offers users tips and guidelines to help them with the sacrament.

Now senior church officials in both the UK and US have given it their seal of approval, in what is thought to be a first.

The app takes users through the sacrament – in which Catholics admit their wrongdoings – and allows them to keep track of their sins.

It also allows them to examine their conscience based on personalised factors such as age, sex and marital status – but it is not intended to replace traditional confession entirely.

Instead, it encourages users to understand their actions and then visit their priest for absolution.

This is treated as a “news of the weird” sort of thing, but it sounds like a neat app. What kind of surprises me is that they’re charging for it. They being the developers, not the church. This strikes me as one of those things that you do for God or the Church or something.

{Editor’s warning: the topic of discussion here is in regard to the “third rail” and the popularity, and possible implications thereof, for Joel Osteen and other new-agey type preachers. Despite the particular rail in question being homosexuality, in keeping with Hit Coffee’s continuing guidelines, please do not feel this is an excuse to write anything that is heavily derogatory towards homosexuals, heterosexuals, or persons on either side of the argument concerning the moral or ethical status thereof.

Our friend Wesley occasionally sends in some tip stories; today’s brings up a nationally famous pastor whose congregation lives in his city, a televangelist-type by the name of Joel Osteen. The last time he made big national news, his wife was having a few issues regarding her enormous ego.

Part of the discussion of what makes Osteen so popular is that, until this point, he’s basically stayed well under the radar when it comes to anything controversial. Rather than being a hellfire-and-brimstone hardcore Baptist-type, a “follow the rules” Catholic type, Osteen is very much a new-agey, “do what feels good”, “peace love dope=god”, welcome to the Bible TV Hour type pastor, the kind of man who wouldn’t be out of place making a cameo on quite possibly the worst TV show that has ever been made.

That being said, apparently Osteen has had a change of heart, or else he’s decided he has a big enough flock to take the risk of going into some third-rail topics, and so he is openly switching away from his previous “I don’t talk about sin” stance into beginning to say, on the air, that certain things are in fact sinful. On the other hand, apparently this stems at least partially from a lower-profile altercation back in November in which Osteen got into it with Joy Behar; then again, Behar seems to have an ongoing need to generate “controversy” to keep View viewership up, and she definitely isn’t above engineering a segment where she’s trying to put words in someone’s mouth while not letting them get in a word of their own edgewise.

Popularity is a hard thing to follow. Someone can be very popular, and then do something incredibly stupid, and turn most of their fanbase against them in one fell swoop. Osteen’s carefully crafted public image is about avoiding that if at all possible; certainly, he tried to sweep his wife’s temper tantrum under the rug, and he’s been very circumspect about discussing other “third rail” issues – divorce (then again his own father had been divorced, politics, or many other controversial topics. Even in the Behar transcript, he seems to be trying to get to a “well we believe homosexuality is a sin but we don’t condemn people for it or kick them out of church for it” stance, while Behar’s very hung up on berating him for using “homosexuality” and “sin” in the same sentence.

At the end of the day, it’s going to be interesting to see where this one goes. Osteen may very well go quickly into the new-agey, self-help-book writing, “Stuart Smalley“-style preacher he’s been to this point, or maybe he’ll start getting a little more into “well this is what the book says, we would love to help you stop sinning” territory. Only time will tell.

Rotten.com has an amazingly harsh article on Mother Theresa. There are two main things it focuses on. The one it spends the most time on is their perception that she was willing to overlook certain abuses from people who treated her well – Indira Gandhi’s imposition of martial law in India in 1975, the son Sanjay’s program of sterilization for the poor, and the Haitian Duvalier regime given as examples. I’m sure there are other details involved, and I’m sure that she (like many people at the time, and similar to the way in which Castro and Chavez routinely have managed to pull the wool over idiotic hollyweird celebrities with more teeth than brain cells) was duped and would probably have said differently had she not been on the wrong side of the dog-and-pony show.

The second point on which it attacks her is the fact that, following the 1971 war which created Bangladesh, she called out for thousands of raped women not to abort the resulting fetuses. This is one of the ongoing items which tends to be a very hard question to answer: should abortion be allowed/encouraged for a woman impregnated as the result of rape?

The question itself lends a hint as to why it is so hard to answer. The circumstances – the rape, the condition of the mother following rape, the fact that the pregnancy will inevitably remind the woman of what happened in a very obvious way – are nothing but grotesque. Depending on one’s beliefs, the options are no less vile.

On the one hand, you might believe (as do most religions) that “human life begins at conception.” In this case, there are a few very ugly points to consider:
1 – Having to carry to term (or even just long enough for a caesarean or induced labor) means the constant reminder of what happened, which may drive the mother to self-destructive acts, possibly up to suicide.
2 – On the belief that the fetus deserves the full rights of any human being, and as a baby is innocent of the circumstances of its conception, ending its life is at worst outright murder and at best the killing of one innocent to try to save the life of another victim.
The question from this perspective then becomes: what is the risk to the mother, and what are the chances the fetus/baby can be carried to term and then given some form of a life (foster/adoption care, etc) to live?

On the other hand, you might believe (as a sizable portion of the population does) that human life begins at some arbitrary point; when the heart first beats, brainwaves first appear, “when it could survive outside the womb” (which keeps getting earlier and earlier as medical technology advances, and may eventually reach the point where an “artificial womb” could raise a human from zygote to birth without the need of a mother at all), or so on. In that case, the calculation inevitably turns to “get rid of it before it reaches that point, since it was forced into the mother against her will.”

To my perspective, none of the options are (at present time) particularly appealing. Bad choices tend to stem from bad circumstances, and these being particularly bad circumstances, I’m not sure that an agreement could ever be fully reached on the “right” thing to do in general. I don’t necessarily think that her calling out to try to prevent the abortions was either evil, or unjustified (especially by the teachings of her church). Neither am I fully convinced that removing the option entirely, especially for those who might be driven to desperate measures, is necessarily the wisest course.

My former boss Willard passed along this on Facebook:

My name is Michael Otterson. I am here representing the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to address the matter of the petition presented today by the Human Rights Campaign.

While we disagree with the Human Rights Campaign on many fundamentals, we also share some common ground. This past week we have all witnessed tragic deaths across the country as a result of bullying or intimidation of gay young men. We join our voice with others in unreserved condemnation of acts of cruelty or attempts to belittle or mock any group or individual that is different – whether those differences arise from race, religion, mental challenges, social status, sexual orientation or for any other reason. Such actions simply have no place in our society.

This Church has felt the bitter sting of persecution and marginalization early in our history, when we were too few in numbers to adequately protect ourselves and when society’s leaders often seemed disinclined to help. Our parents, young adults, teens and children should therefore, of all people, be especially sensitive to the vulnerable in society and be willing to speak out against bullying or intimidation whenever it occurs, including unkindness toward those who are attracted to others of the same sex. This is particularly so in our own Latter-day Saint congregations. Each Latter-day Saint family and individual should carefully consider whether their attitudes and actions toward others properly reflect Jesus Christ’s second great commandment – to love one another.

I find it important that they do not just reject violence towards homosexuality, but also non-violent bullying as well. From the same source, I was quite surprise and happy to read this:

The Church said the Salt Lake City Council’s new nondiscrimination ordinance “is fair and reasonable” and balances fair housing and employment rights with the religious rights of the community.

Otterson told city council members: “The issue before you tonight is the right of people to have a roof over their heads and the right to work without being discriminated against. But, importantly, the ordinances also attempts to balance vital issues of religious freedom. In essence, the Church agrees with the approach which Mayor Becker is taking on this matter.”

I disagree pretty strongly with the Church on gay marriage, though I know many of you agree with it. Regardless, the position on housing and jobs is a position that the Church did not have to take. Kudos to them for doing so.

According to once source, Mormons have higher-than-average IQs (and this remains true even if you’re looking only at non-Hispanic whites). Considerably higher, as far as averages go. Of course, the even juicier part for me is that Episcopalians are even higher. Higher than smug agnostics and atheists, even. So now I have a response next time some atheist talks about atheist IQ’s. And I myself can be smug against those people that are spiritual-but-not-religious, who are a few pegs further down than Episcopalians or Atheists. The Jewish are, of course, higher than everybody else.

It’s interesting to contemplate what makes some religions do better than others on these sorts of tests. That’s in large part because there are two ways that religions gain followers. They are born or they are made. So for instance, it could be true that Baptists have lower IQs in the aggregate because it is a theology that is most attractive to people with lower IQs. Or it could be that they have lower IQs because of the population of people born into the faith. The possibility, involving the other two, is that smart Baptists leave the faith. My impression of Baptists is that a disproportionate number of them are made and not born. On the other hand, I know comparatively few former Baptists, so it’s less like say the Church of Christ (The ICC, not the Congregationalists) which by virtue of its inflexibility seems to hemorrhage people that can’t buy into it full freight. While Baptists are often known for being liberal, liberals like my former roommate can still find a place within the church and still be Baptist. The numbers don’t reflect any distinction between the conservative Southern Baptists and the mainline American Baptists. Because of this and its non-centralized leadership, it’s less either-or than say the LDS or Catholic churches. So my former roommate Hubert can still be a Baptist while still being a socially liberal Democrat.

My own Episcopal Church definitely falls into the category of one you are born into. The only converts we really get are disaffected liberal Catholics and they can be really hard to pry loose from that church even if it’s driving them crazy. Meanwhile, Episcopalians are constantly leaving the church for either Catholicism or conservative protestantism depending on whether they are High Church or Low Church sorts of folks. So when it comes to Episcopalians, it comes down to who is left. Apparently it’s a disproportionate number of the smart people that end up hanging around. My guess is that, despite the fact I’m not myself a very good Episcopalian, I am representative of a fair selection of its membership. TEC is liberal enough that it’s almost not worth leaving whatever our theological uncertainties. A lot of those that leave for more conservative protestant churches are often those whose minds cannot handle infirm theology and want to go somewhere where they are simply told how it is. The same is probably true, to a lesser extent, of those that leave for Catholicism. Meanwhile, those that stay behind are disproportionately likely to have the intelligence to contemplate the vagueries of the church and can handle the contradictory views within the church. And given Episcopalianism’s and Anglicanism’s well-heeled history, they were probably starting from a relatively high set-point anyway.

Catholicism, which is relatively middling, is another interesting case. It’s definitely something that most adherents are born into. Those born into the faith include a lot of Italians and Irish who are not known for being particularly intelligent (in the non-Hispanic white population) and those that came here back in the day were not (as far as I know) likely to come from the higher classes out there. I don’t think that former Catholics are as likely to be disproportionately from the more intelligent or less intelligent sectors of the rank and file. They do seem to be getting a lot of high-profile conversions among intelligent conservatives that want religion but don’t want low-brow protestantism, though I do not know how significant it is to the population at large. I know at least one protestant-raised guy that converted to Catholicism and he’s pretty smart. I know a number of Catholic-raised folks that left the church and they’re pretty smart, too. Then again, I think it’s safe to say that I know a disproportionate number of smart people.

I’ve got no good reason for the Mormons to do as well as they do. They don’t have an especially well-heeled history. Theirs is a church that’s hard to leave but also hard for someone with any serious theological doubts to stay into. The former Mormons I know are disproportionately really intelligent. Maybe it goes back to the polygamy wherein men of limited intelligence were simply excluded from breeding. The church I suppose is large enough that inbreeding was not as big an issue as I would expect in the FLDS. Then again, is the LDS church of old that much bigger than the FLDS church of today?

Or maybe the numbers are just goofy and flawed. They’re taken from something called the NLY97 test. It’s possible that for Catholics, for instance, a disproportionate number of test-takers came from superior Catholic schools and so they ended up higher than they should have. Ditto for Episcopalians. So these numbers could all be useless. But what fun would posting on that be?

Spiritual women are more promiscuous than are non-spiritual women. The study differentiated between “spiritual” and “religious” and though the article focuses on spirituality, the pecking order seems to be spiritual over non-spiritual, irreligious over religious. Their theory:

“Believing one is intimately tied to other human beings and that interconnectedness and harmony are indispensible may lead one to believe sexual intimacy possesses a divine or transcendent quality in itself,” Burris writes. “In fact, ascribing sacred qualities to sex has been positively associated with positive affective reactions to sex, frequency of sex, and number of sexual partners among university students.”

Sounds blissful.

I have an alternative theory.

Being an atheist is undemanding but also unpopular and for a lot of people unfulfilling. Being a member of an organized religious provides you with a packaged set of beliefs but comes with a bunch of rules you have to follow. Call yourself “spiritual” and not “religious” and you can do whatever the heck you want with less in the way of social consequences and you can find meaning in whatever the heck you want to find meaning in. So if it feels good you can make it not about feeling good but about connectedness and all that jazz. The rules are typically more generous when you make them up as you go along. You get gratification from all ends.

That these people would correlate highly with people that engage in promiscuous, unprotected sex is hardly a surprise.

In truth, I really don’t know whether God exists or not. For a variety of reasons, I have an operational assumption that He does, but the more I really try to pin it down, the more agnostic I become. A lot of agnostics and atheists say that they wish that they were religious, but often do so in a tone dripping with condescension: “I wish I could be such a simpleton as to believe in something that obviously gives your simple little mind happiness.” But it’s true, for me, that I wish that I were more religious than I am. Not so much because it would make things simpler to have all the answers, but because the times when a sort of semblance of faith has touched my life, it has helped me tremendously.

One of the things that I really appreciate about country music is the way that it is able to weave religion and God into its content in a way that is accessible to people like me. Songs purely about loving God or praising Him are about as interesting to me as songs about being soooo in love with some chick or some dude. It has to be done really well to avoid being insufferably dull. So it becomes one of those things where artists that have to write for people that don’t experience God in quite the same way that they do have to go the extra mile in making a song original, interesting, or relatable.

Religious songs in country music are hit and miss, but some of them, when they hit, had a pretty profound effect on me. One such artist made a point of having at least one religious song on each CD that he put out there. In between songs about getting drunk and misbehaving, there would be some of the most interesting songs that were sort of a follow-up for the toll that it is taking not just on his life, but on his soul. The first such song uses great imagery of a bible sitting on his dresser and a woman’s clothes tossed around his floor and between the stained glass on a chapel and neon signs in bars.

In the outset of a bootleg version of the song, he describes it as such: “It’s about being a sinner. And knowin’ it.” That’s also a theme of his follow-up to it, which is about his inability to figure out why, exactly, God would love him.

I mention those songs even though there are others requesting that God give the singer the strength to go on, requesting that Satan kiss the singer’s posterior, or the Devil being challenged to some competition involving classic automobiles. But it’s the songs about being a sinner and knowing it that I think of most because, at that point in my life, that was a message that resonated with me greatly.

When I was listening to these songs, I was doing things that I was not proud of. I was doing things that I simply did not consider to be me, yet there I was doing them. The notion of there being a God that loves me anyway was really appealing on that basis. Not because it allowed me to screw up as much as I wanted, but rather because it challenged me to be worthy of that love.

And in some ways it could be said that it was not even about God at all. It was about having parents that loved me, friends that prayed for me, and so on. It was about having been given all of this, screwing it up, and yet having a sense that things did not have to be this way and that I was not beyond redemption.

It would have been really easy for me to leave it at that. But I didn’t.

Instead, there were moments when I really, truly felt something like what I’m told God’s presence feels like. Like He was there. It was enough to get me going to church again and trying to rap my head around the concept of God as more than just a concept and of Jesus and Jesus’ message of being more than just words in a book.

But, as is often the case when I try to think about God logically, when I would look for Him, He wouldn’t be there. It was light a shadow or a phantom in the corner of my eye. I turn my eyes and suddenly He was gone. Only to creep back in when I was thinking not of Him, but of the subjects that seemed to pique His interest in me.

Maybe it was just an imaginary physical manifestation of the desire on my part to be a better person. But it got me through some pretty hard times when it seemed that very little in my life was going right in regards to what I was doing but also (perhaps mostly) in regards to what was going on around me. And His intrusion wasn’t even particularly welcome. My preferred relationship with God is less intimate and in times when I feel like I have a better handle on things. I don’t like being that guy who only comes to God (or wants God to come to him) when he wants something.

But it was what it was, or wasn’t what it wasn’t, depending. Unwelcome, but ultimately helpful. A helpful delusion, or a momentary glimpse of and connection with a typically elusive deity. The more I try to look at it, the less tangible it all becomes. Not unlike the musical distinction between the off-putting songs trying to convince me to believe in God and the songs in which God is part of a backdrop of a grander narrative.

Though I’m not a hugely religious person, I’ve always had an appreciation for music which manages to incorporate religion in a way that I find palatable. This song relies heavily on finding grace through God, but ultimately I consider it about “rising above” and turning away from self-destructive sin.

This video gets the spotlight this weekend not entirely because of the lyrical content of the song, but also because it represents everything a music video should be. It outlines and reinforces the message of the song without simply being a literal representation of it.

Clancy and I did laundry on Sunday. I hadn’t realized that Clancy needed to use my phone to call her mother (who is about to leave the country), so when she told me to bring something to do at the laundromat, I figured my phone would be sufficient. When she went outside to make her call, I had nothing to do. Fortunately, though, there was a WATCHTOWER in on a table. On the cover was a picture of flames with the test “SHOULD YOU BE AFRAID OF HELL?”

The answer, it turned out, was “No.”

I never had any idea what the Jehova’s Witness folks (who make the Watchtower) thought about Hell, but there’s no way I would have guessed that judging by the cover.

Chris Dierkes, a former Jesuit seminary student turned Anglican, has a host of interesting observations about sexuality in the Catholic and Anglo-Catholic priesthoods:

I’ve spent some portion of time in Latin America (Mexico, Peru, and Nicaragua to be precise) and how many times did I meet a local parish priest who had a live-in nanny or church secretary or housecleaning lady or whatever they called her along with the priest’s “nephew” or “niece”? Answer: more than once.

Why don’t we just call it what it is? She’s not the cleaning lady; she’s his wife. He’s her husband. That’s their child. They’re a family. The family is a good, even naturally beautiful thing. What’s unnatural is to be unable to call this what it is.

Just so with gay clergy. Their offering is a very holy one, but the gift becomes marred when locked into this tortured game of doing everything possible–inevitably ending in ironic tragic-comedy as I said–to not admit what is totally obvious and staring you in the face. When freed from this hypocritical charade, their lives become become a symbol both of a desire for and expression of a redeemed humanity, a redeemed creaturely existence. (Or so I believe anyway).

The reasons why homosexuals may be disproportionately represented in the Catholic priesthood seems obvious: if one is uncomfortable with one’s sexuality, choosing a path where one is denied the their sexuality is highly logical. That there seems to be portions of this in the Anglican Communion strikes me as bizarre. Perhaps relating to my own difficulties with faith and how I am an Episcopalian by genealogy and default as much as sturdy conviction, my thought is that if you’re a homosexual that cannot embrace your homosexuality, and you’re a High Church, Anglo-Catholic conservative type… why not just cross the dang pond? To be a conservative Anglo-Catholic of the sort that the Pope is reaching out to is to reject a good portion of what makes the Anglican Church distinct from the Catholic Church. These days, even the conservatism is somewhat optional in the Catholic ministry.

As Episcopalianism is one of the periodic topics of Hit Coffee, I’d been intending to remark on His Holiness’s recent entreaty with conservative High Church Episcopalians to (re-)join the fold, but I haven’t had enough time to develop a concrete thesis.