There’s an app for information on the priesthood

Friday, October 21st, 2011

Eve reputedly led Adam into temptation with an apple. Now an enterprising Irish Catholic priest has designed an Apple app designed at leading men into the priesthood.

Fr Paddy Rushe’s new “Vocations” app is billed as the first of its kind in the world and is available to download free from the Apple iPhone app store.

Developed by Magic Time Apps in Dublin, it is described as “an original approach to assist current and future generations seeking to investigate and find information on vocations to the diocesan priesthood in Ireland”.

Highlights of the app include connections to Twitter and Facebook, and contact details and statistics on the 26 Catholic dioceses of Ireland. It also includes answers to frequently asked questions to assist in discerning a vocation, a news feed from the national vocations’ website, as well as novel and cursory “tests” to enable the user reflect on vocation potential.

As to those “novel and cursory” tests, Fr Rushe told The Irish Times these explored lifestyle issues and were intended to help a candidate assess his overall aptitude for the priesthood. Among other things, the candidate is rated on a scale when it came to thinking of others, a desire to provide a service, and his abilities in relating to the marginalised.

A second test concerns celibacy and involves questions on discipline in a candidate’s life, what he believed about relationships, as well as balance where alcohol and food were concerned.

Answers to frequently asked questions concerning entering a seminary included what points were required to get into the seminary, specialist subjects taught there, training, and costs involved.

Future updates planned for the app will include a “prayer counter” to allow people pledge prayer for vocations, and a picture gallery which will include images from the life of a seminarian.

Confessing that he is “a bit of a techie” who is on Twitter and Facebook, Fr Rushe said the church needed “to be there, accessible to all”. The launch of his app by Bishop Donal McKeown, auxiliary bishop of Down and Connor and chairman of the vocations commission of the Irish Bishops’ Conference, takes place in Naas, Co Kildare, today.

The event will also mark the handover from Fr Rushe as the church’s national co-ordinator for diocesan vocations to Fr Willie Purcell and to his team. Fr Rushe had been in the role for five years.