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 apps (as in, “The Catholic Faith: There’s an app for that”) only scratch the surface of faith-related digital materials available in Apple’s App Store and, to a lesser extent, the Android Market and Palm Pre App Catalog. With these digital Catholic resources comes the undeniable convenience of modern-day prayer.
Hitting the road and want to pray to St. What’s-His-Name for a safe trip? Grab your phone and access not only St. Christopher’s name, but also his biography, a daily meditation and a few prayer ideas. Want to take advantage of a quiet lunch and skim today’s liturgical readings (or tomorrow’s or next year’s)? IMissal can make it happen at the touch of a button. Forgot the Hail, Holy Queen or the Apostles Creed while praying the rosary? Quickly look up the prayers in the Daughters of St. Paul’s Rosary Miracle Prayer App. Or, even better, pray the rosary along with the sisters’ audio recording.
“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 a recent interview. “You could be looking at the psalms or the morning meditation.”
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Arlington Catholic Herald - Church ascends into digital age - catholicherald.com
2 comments:
Fascinating. We're living in the future, already!
Among other changes this digitizing of Catholic resources brings is one that impacts my Pious Ladies Bookmobile dramatically. It also impacts Pauline Book and Media stores.
How do retail booksellers get into the selling of digital products? When you can download from iTunes or iStore or whatever, do these large digital providers create de facto monopolies?
Not that I am complaining - I use an online Office instead of my own copy of the Liturgy of the Hours. You don't have to keep switching pages, the algorithm (I presume) for assembling the online Hours does it for you. But this revolution, like that of the printing press, is shaking things up all over the culture.
I saw an interesting thing BN.com is doing. Go into a Barnes and Nobles store and show them your device and you will get a coupon for a free ebook online. You go home and download it…. we need to keep thinking of these things. sr kathryn james
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