Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 13, 1993 TAG: 9302130027
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY MARY SCHMICH KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Medium
APPREHENSIVE ABOUT CONFESSING YOUR SINS? JUST TRY `CONFAXION'
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been too long since my last confaxion.Confaxion, in case you are confused, is a sacrament whereby sinners seek absolution for lying, cheating, stealing, coveting their neighbor's husband and hiring illegal nannies.
Some of you may think "confaxion" is a typo and that the word intended here is "confession." Typos are not unheard of in these spaces, but if you don't know about confaxion, it only goes to show that you are not hip to the spiritual breakthroughs that mark our entry into the New New Age.
Yea, we are on the dawn of the 21st Century of the Soul, a blessed time in which our civilization of bizzy bees can speak to God by fax.
Hallelujah! Fax the Lord! What? His line is busy?
In recent days, the news has served up two examples of this nascent religious trend. (As media watchers know, the media can, and probably will, pump up two of anything into a trend.)
Early evidence of today's trend appeared three weeks ago, when the Israeli national telephone company unveiled a worldwide prayer fax line.
For $2.98 for the first minute, believers can fax their prayers to Jerusalem, site of the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest shrine. A phone company employee will deliver the faxes to the wall and insert them into the cracks between the wall's rough stone blocks. There the faxes join the hundreds of prayers brought daily to the wall by the faithful themselves.
Now comes the news that high-tech worship knows the boundaries of neither nation nor denomination.
In May, organizers of an annual church fair in Italy will introduce a fax-equipped Roman Catholic confessional. This innovation reportedly has ignited theological bonfires in Italy, where one church leader decried it as "a space-age telephone booth."
A space-age confessional phone booth is mind-boggling to those of us who grew up confessing the old-fashioned way - in dark, airless medieval boxes with hard wooden kneelers and a shadowy live confessor on the other side of a screen.
Back in those low-tech days, we had the idea that confession was supposed to hurt, at least a little.
Back in the old days you felt someone was driving nails into your knees as you spilled your evil deeds. ("I said bad words 14 times, disobeyed my mother and bashed my brother on the head with a Coke bottle. Sorry.")
What humiliation you suffered trotting publicly to the altar to perform your penance, which usually was something like the recitation of a hundred Hail Marys and a thousand Glory Bes. This stung all the more if your classmate Prissy Perfect had let you know she was never assigned more than three Our Fathers.
The confaxional - faxfessional? - spares modern sinners these forms of pain, along with the messiness of personal involvement. What's more, apparently built on the premise that people today are too busy to repent in person, it saves time and gas.
And yet for all the ease it promises, the confaxional presents problems of its own.
Imagine the dangers. Punch the wrong button on the auto-dialer and instead of sending your priest your catalog of last week's sins, you transmit the details of your crimes to everyone on your Friends and Family list. What are they going to think when they learn you said bad words 14 times, disobeyed your mother and bashed your brother over the head with a Coke bottle?
This is one fax that really requires a cover sheet, the kind that lawyers send: "This message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law."
Confaxion presents other troubling questions. Does the priest fax you back penance and advice? If so, where? Most people don't have fax machines in their homes. Would your penance wind up at the nearest Kinko's? Would it arrive at your office, where it would slip in between the press releases and the pizza menus and you could hope to grab it before your boss did?
And where do you fax your confession from in the first place? Will sinners be skulking around the office fax machine waiting for a private moment to confax?
Even religion, of course, must keep up with the changing times. But you have to wonder whether prayer and penance are really supposed to be as cushy and convenient as the business center at a five-star hotel.