Virtuality - too many times removed.

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Though at least one person has promised me that he's seen a site that offers real (as opposed to true) confession via the web, I've yet to see such a site. The closest I've come is a sort of do-it-yourself model in which by going through the motions with the right intent you're able to absolve yourself. Though this E-Confessional is on a site with numerous humorous items, it seems to be fully serious. Another example is very obviously tongue-in-cheek.

Be that as it may, other than one source that makes a distinction between confessing via the web (possible) and receiving absolution via the web (sorry, impossible), most web sources I've been able to find (here, or here, for instance) tell us quite definitively that it can't be done. A very recently posted article continues to make that point.

This really shouldn't surprise us. Religious sacraments are, by their nature, metaphorical. A priest who absolves sins is, in the eye of the absolved, an instrument of the divine. That unto itself demands a bit of a leap of the imagination, and numerous tangible vestiges are necessary to help the imagination along a bit. Though going straight to the point by foregoing the trappings might seem logical (after all, the precedure is "virtual" to begin with, though some claim to have a scientific explanation), it ultimately diminishes the ability of that same sacrement to convince. That isn't necessarily the case, however, with virtual minyans.

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Go to: The Church of the Eternal Click.