Confessions Of An Online Sinner

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A 2005 Georgetown University study showed a dramatic decline in the number of Catholics that go to confession. Conversely, a recent report on the racing trend of online confession websites where the guilty can go and unload shows that this may be the cause for fewer in-person confessions in the church in the name of the Father, the Son and privacy.

Church operated sites like ivescrewedup.com and mysecret.tv are places where individuals are able to admit their addictions to problems such as impulsive shoe buying and pornography, or even criminal acts. Dailyconfessions.com and camfess.com are others where the most trivial of sins can be forgiven, like one woman’s admittance of her dislike for her boyfriend’s appearance.

Even the popular YouTube has videos of porn (not to watch for the easily offended) addicted priests spewing their sins called XXX Church.

According to the article, one confession website called Confession 2.0, which was not able to be sourced or linked but appeared to be a Jewish blog instead, trades in privacy rights for anonymity in that a confessor’s sin is presented to total strangers. The confessions are unmonitored by professional or religious counselors.

Although the secrecy and anonymity provided an individual who can divulge guilty sins in this manner may seem like a feasible spiritual purge for some, it is important to remember that accountability for one’s actions also plays a key role in the confessional.

Father Ricardo Bailey, an Atlanta, GA priest, believes that the web is another means for people to avoid responsibility for their actions. He states:

"I'm not in a drive-through business," he said. "Confessing means you're taking accountability for the things we've done wrong, that you understand the impact you've had on other people.

His feelings come mainly because when another person is wronged by ones actions, part of the confession may be to tell an individual who executed the wrong deed to approach the wronged person or persons to whom they have wronged. Online confessions remove remove the responsibility associated with the act itself.

Other members of the diocese share Bailey’s feelings and find online confession as a horrible means of purging, claiming emails and blogs as an easy way to share or vent ones own remorse for their actions and citing the inability to see a persons “lying” face or hear their tone can prevent a true confession from taking place.

"How do you know that people aren't lying, doing it for the shock value, someone trying to outdo the confession before them?"

Clergy who support the sights see the confessions as therapeutic and although some individual shock-jockeys might attempt to post, the majority of posters are being helped by their confessions and the confessions of others. One Reverend wrote:

"Just because confessions don't go directly to God through a priest or a church doesn't mean they aren't sincere," he said. "And there's something healing about just going on the site and reading it, seeing all these other confessions. Some people might realize, 'Maybe I'm not alone.' "

Aside from the self-serving benefit that these websites provide, one psychologist feels that the reasons people go here and express their problems is more in an effort to find some sort of goodness or positive response.

"They have said to me, 'This is where hope is for me.' They think they can find on these sites some kind of goodness that eludes them in real life."
But people who seek something more than their words on a Web site are often disappointed, said Turkle, who's also a psychologist. Most sites do not invite or allow responses to messages, although grouphug.com allows posters to vote "hug" or "shrug" in response to confessions.

Whether the reason is social, shock factor, emotional purging or to fulfill a religious requirement due to time constraints, the fact remains that websites are becoming the mainstream method of confession, while in-person confession may be sign of what future history books will be made of.