On February 13, 2011, guardian.co.uk ran a story with the headline: Gay rights groups attack iPhone confession app for Roman Catholics. Group claims app fosters ‘anti-gay spiritual abuse’ as it shoots up list of popular downloads. The following is from that story:

Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, a group that campaigns on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people, accused the app of “helping to create neurotic individuals who are ashamed of who they are”.

“This is cyber spiritual abuse that promotes backward ideas in a modern package,” said Besen. “Gay Catholics don’t need to confess, they need to come out of the closet and challenge anti-gay dogma. The false idea that being gay is something to be ashamed of has destroyed too many lives. This iPhone app is facilitating and furthering the harm.”

I don’t have an iPhone or an iPod Touch (hopefully they’ll port this app to Mac SO X), so I don’t what questions it asks besides, “Have I been guilty of any homosexual activity?” However, there are some other questions that I wouldn’t be surprised it also asks, which deal with activity that is just as sinful as homosexual acts:

• Have I been guilty of looking at pornography?
• Have I been guilty of using contraception?
• Have I been guilty of masturbating?
• Have I been guilty of fornication or entertained thoughts of fornication?
• Have I been guilty of any adulterous activity or entertained adulterous thoughts?

This last one is committed by a large number of heterosexuals. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, “[r]esearch suggests that 20 to 40 percent of heterosexual married men and 20 to 25 percent of heterosexual married women will have an affair during their lifetime.” “Based on internal projections, Avid Life is expected to generate $60 million in revenue this year and $20 million in profit. Almost all of that comes from Ashley Madison”, which Bloomberg Businessweek describes as “the premier ‘dating’ website for aspiring adulterers.” It is just as sinful for a heterosexual to commit adultery as it is with someone with homosexual inclinations to act on those inclinations.

Of course it’s not sinful for adulterous or homosexual thoughts to come into your mind. This is simply temptation; however, it is sinful to willfully act on or entertain these thoughts.

Venerable John Paul the Great even taught that a man commits the sin of adultery even if he entertains lustful thoughts of his wife:

2. The analysis which we have made so far of Matthew 5:27-28 indicates the necessity of amplifying and above all deepening the interpretation presented previously, with regard to the ethical meaning that this enunciation contains. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Let us dwell on the situation described by the Master, a situation in which the one who commits adultery in his heart by means of an interior act of lust (expressed by the look) is the man. It is significant that in speaking of the object of this act, Christ did not stress that it is “another man’s wife,” or a woman who is not his own wife, but says generically, a woman. Adultery committed in the heart is not circumscribed in the limits of the interpersonal relationship which make it possible to determine adultery committed in the body. It is not these limits that decide exclusively and essentially about adultery committed in the heart, but the very nature of lust. It is expressed in this case by a look, that is, by the fact that that man—of whom Christ speaks, for the sake of example—looks lustfully. Adultery in the heart is committed not only because man looks in this way at a woman who is not his wife, but precisely because he looks at a woman in this way. Even if he looked in this way at the woman who is his wife, he could likewise commit adultery in his heart.

General Audience of October 8, 1980

How come nobody that is guilty of these other equally immoral acts is protesting this wonderful iPhone app? Where are all the Adultery Rights groups? Where are the Pornography and Masturbation Rights groups? Where are the Contraception Rights groups? This last one is big. Some say that more Catholics use Contraception than not. If this app is any good, it would ask these questions. How come nobody’s protesting these other questions.

Now I’m assuming this app asks questions like these. If it doesn’t, it has some major defects. I’d really like to try out this app. As I said, I don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch (maybe one day), but I do have an iMac. If any of you at Little iApps are reading this, please port Confession: A Roman Catholic App to Mac OS X. And, please hurry in case Steve Jobs pulls the plug on it like he did the app for the Manhattan Declaration.