{"id":70,"date":"2008-08-21T11:27:27","date_gmt":"2008-08-21T11:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2008\/08\/confess-do-u-txt-in-church.html"},"modified":"2008-08-21T11:27:27","modified_gmt":"2008-08-21T11:27:27","slug":"confess-do-u-txt-in-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/08\/confess-do-u-txt-in-church.html","title":{"rendered":"Confess! Do U txt in Church?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"b16<\/span>Okay, add to the list of modern annoyances in sacred spaces checking email and texting. Part of the Crackberry, er, Blackberry culture (which I have recently joined) I guess. Lord, save me. It may be hard.
\nAOL’s Fourth Annual Email Addiction Survey<\/a> shows that more Americans are checking email while driving, in the bathroom, on vacation–and yes, in church, where email use has gone from 12 percent of folks (at least those who do ‘fess up) to 15 percent. (Full results are here<\/a>.)
\nI guess we should be happy they’re going. But are Catholics better or worse than others? Heck, we have so much to do, what with getting up and down. Still, the Pope may not have helped matters when the Vatican launched a text message service from His Holiness for Sydney’s WYD<\/a>. According to this CNA story<\/a>, the pope’s first text message went:<\/p>\n

“Young friend, God and his people expect much from u because u have within you the Fathers supreme gift: the Spirit of Jesus – BXVI.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I liked the “BXVI” signature, but I suspect any middle-schooler would have written it in fewer characters. Still, I strongly doubt the pontiff is checking or sending emails or texts while celebrating mass. I suppose it’s encouraging church is still a sanctuary of sorts. Check out these numbers of places check email:<\/p>\n

\u2022 In bed in their pajamas: 67%
\n\u2022 From the bathroom: 59% (up from 53% last year)
\n\u2022 While driving: 50% (up from 37% last year)
\n\u2022 In a bar or club: 39%
\n\u2022 In a business meeting: 38%
\n\u2022 During happy hour: 34%
\n\u2022 While on a date: 25%
\n\u2022 From church: 15% (up from 12% last year)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here are 10 most-addicted cities. I wonder if Brooklyn is any better?
\nHere are the ten most email addicted cities in the country:
\n1. New York
\n2. Houston
\n3. Chicago
\n4. Detroit
\n5. San Francisco
\n6. Sacramento
\n7. Orlando
\n8. Minneapolis-St. Paul
\n9. Denver
\n10. Phoenix
\nShip-of-Folls had a competition a few years back for a text message version of the Lord’s Prayer. Here are the results<\/a>, and here is the winner:<\/p>\n

dad@hvn,ur spshl.
\nwe want wot u
\nwant&urth2b like hvn.
\ngiv us food&4giv r sins
\nlyk we 4giv uvaz.
\ndon’t test us!save us!
\nbcos we kno ur boss,
\nur tuf&ur cool 4 eva!ok? <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Latin is looking better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, add to the list of modern annoyances in sacred spaces checking email and texting. Part of the Crackberry, er, Blackberry culture (which I have recently joined) I guess. Lord, save me. It may be hard. AOL’s Fourth Annual Email Addiction Survey shows that more Americans are checking email while driving, in the bathroom, on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-pop-culture","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nConfess! 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}