iMissal?

ROME – An Italian priest has developed an application that will let priests celebrate Mass with an iPad on the altar instead of the regular Roman missal. [My brother has one and he saved some of the prayers for blessings

The Rev. Paolo Padrini, a consultant with the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said Friday the free application will be launched in July in English, French, Spanish, Italian and Latin.

Two years ago, Padrini developed the iBreviary, an application that brought the book of daily prayers used by priests onto iPhones. To date, some 200,000 people have downloaded the application, he said. [And it's free!  When you go to Apple, you have to buy the applications you liked.]

The iPad application is similar but also contains the complete missal — containing all that is said and sung during Mass throughout the liturgical year. Upgrades are expected to feature audio as well as commentaries and suggestions for homilies [!] as well as musical accompaniment, he said.

"Paper books will never disappear," he said in a phone interview from his home parish in Tortona, in Italy's northern Piemonte region. But at the same time "we shouldn't be scandalized that on altars there are these instruments in support of prayer."

Padrini, 36, said he expected priests who have to travel a lot for work would find the application most useful, noting that he recently had to celebrate Mass in a small parish where the missal was "a small book, a bit dirty, old."

"If I had had my iPad with me, it would've been better than this old, tiny book," he said.

Pope Benedict XVI, a classical music lover who was reportedly given an iPod in 2006, has sought to reach out to young people through new media: the Vatican has a regularly updated presence on You Tube and Facebook. Based on the success of the iBreviary, Padrini was recruited by the Vatican to oversee its youth outreach program in the new media, http://www.pope2you.net.

He stressed that the iPad application, like the iBreviary, was launched at his own instigation and with his own money and is not an official Vatican initiative. Vatican officials have previously praised the iBreviary as a novel way of evangelizing. — AP

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I am not fan of the iPad.  My brother has one, one of the first lucky ones to have it.  I borrowed it for a day, but I completely lost my interest.  It's touch screen is cool, but that's just it.

If I were on an ego trip, I would have bought any product at Starbucks, even if I hate the joint, (I buy coffee at different shops but definitely NOT Starbucks.  I hate their coffee!)  I would have stayed there for hours until I drain the battery of my brother's iPad and would just see the look of envy in the eyes of the tweens buying chocolate drinks in that coffee shop.  Yeah, I think that is how useful the iPad would be.  Evil me...

The critics were right.  It is just an iPod Touch on steroids.

But if it will be used for evangelization it surely is a great way to use the technology!

"Father, you have no reason to use your own words when blessing people and things.  You have your iPad!"

Remember that line...ROFL!