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Smartphone applications integrate prayer life with daily technology |
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By Gretchen R. Crowe - Catholic News Service
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Monday, 21 June 2010 |
Praying is now so 21st century.
The church capitalizes on technology with the iMissal application, available on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Android phones. It provides daily readings, Catholic prayers and Bible verses. CNS photo/Gretchen R. Crowe, Arlington Catholic Herald
Instead of a paperback missalette, there's iMissal. Instead of prayer cards, there's a touch-screen Saint A Day. Instead of randomly jotting down prayer requests, there's a digitally organized list in PrayerSteward.
These three applications -- better known as apps -- only scratch the
surface of faith-related digital materials available in Apple's App
Store and, to a lesser extent, in the Android Market and Palm Pre App
Catalog. With these digital Catholic resources comes the undeniable
convenience of modern-day prayer.
"I know people who before they even get out of bed they have their iPod
Touch or their iPhone in their hand," said Sister Kathryn James Hermes, a
Daughter of St. Paul and director of digital publishing for Pauline
Books and Media, in an interview with the Arlington Catholic Herald,
newspaper of the Arlington Diocese.
"You could be looking at the psalms or the morning meditation," she
added.
In March, Parks Associates, a market research and consulting company
specializing in digital technologies, reported that smartphone (i.e.
iPhone, Android, Palm Pre) users are expected to quadruple by 2014,
resulting in 1 billion users worldwide.
That's a market that everyone, even the Vatican, can get behind.
On Easter Sunday, the Vatican Observatory Foundation, which promotes
scientific research of the heavens, launched the Vatican-approved iPhone
app: "Daily Sermonettes with Father Mike Manning."
"These daily reflections are inspired by Scripture, using God's
uplifting message as a guide in your daily life, supporting the
foundation's mission of scientific research, education and discovery,"
the website reads.
Also approved by the Vatican is iBreviary (available on iPhone and
Android), an app developed in part by Italian priest Father Paolo
Padrini, that contains daily readings, the Liturgy of the Hours and
other prayers in multiple languages.
"As religious, we take to heart that (Pope) Benedict has said we need to
give a soul to technology, a soul to communications," Sister Kathryn
said. "We do that through prayer, through reflection, through the love
with which we carry out our apostolate -- even the way in which we
create our apps, trying to make them a truly beautiful experience."
Sister Kathryn and the Daughters of St. Paul always are on the lookout
for ways to give the Internet a soul by using it to spread the good
news.
"For those who never go into a church, through the media we're able to
allow wherever they are to become a church," she said. "It becomes a
place of encounter for them, a sacred space, a type of church. It
becomes a way to multiply our presence to a whole new audience."
The iMissal app, developed by Cantcha Inc. and available for iPhone and
Android users, contains a full calendar displaying all liturgical
seasons, all Mass readings for every liturgical cycle, audio readings, a
daily Bible verse and a list of popular prayers.
"It really is meant to become the source of everything Catholic that
Catholics turn to for prayer and devotion and faith," Sister Kathryn
said. "It's this very simple thing. You can have the readings right in
your hand along with everything else that organizes your life."
Favorite prayers can be e-mailed to friends, and iMissal is connected
with CatholicTV, a television ministry of the Archdiocese of Boston, and
enables users to stream Mass online.
Though the Rosary Miracle Prayer app, available in June, users can pray
the rosary in his or her own "sacred space." Audio tracks feature the
Daughters of St. Paul -- recorded at their studio in Boston -- praying
the decades, and 18 different sets of pictures help draw the faithful
into the four sets of mysteries.
From within the app, users can e-mail the Daughters of St. Paul directly
with personal prayer intentions.
With the Saint A Day app, invoking a prayer to the patron saint of
cancer, artists, flying or mail delivery is only an index finger away. A
quick search results in a wide breadth of information on a particular
saint, and users then are able to e-mail it to a friend in need.
PrayerSteward, an application released earlier this month by
Safe-t-Technologies LLC, offers an easy way to keep track of prayer
intentions.
Once a user make a promise to remember someone in prayer, it can be
added to the PrayerSteward list. The user can set time limits or
reminders or e-mail the prayer request to others. More information is
available at prayersteward.com, and a quick search on YouTube provides a
useful tutorial.
Besides the digital apps, the Daughters of St. Paul have six CDs
available for download on iTunes and will soon have books available for
e-readers like Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook and Apple's
iPad.
Despite all the apps, smartphones and fancy devices, however, the
mission of evangelization for the Daughters of St. Paul -- and for the
church -- remains the same today as 2,000 years ago in St. Paul's time.
"All of these things are means," Sister Kathryn said. "They are a way to
reach out to a lot of people at once. That's really the essence of our
mission, to evangelize out."
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