It occurred to me today, as I was completing my Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review (banned in China and in Google-USA under that heading), that Facebook is the internet version of the Catholic Church's confessional, at least as I witnessed (endured?) it as part of my "unam, sanctam, catholicam" childhood growing up as a Catholic U.S. Foreign Service brat in the Città Eterna, where the Papacy reigned supreme (well, maybe not quite).
Granted, when you speak about your great me-me-me achievements on Zuck's Facebook invention (atrocity?), you are not disclosing your sins (but then maybe you are) -- but you are still hidden, hidden from your interlocutors
by an invisible electronic wall -- just as you cannot see the usually soft-spoken but unrecognizable/anonymous clergyman in the confessional, where "the priest and penitent are in separate compartments and speak to each other through a grid or lattice."
And, above all, on Facebook, aren't we seeking absolution/recognition? -- which, BTW, a priest will give you, in a confessional, at the cheap price of a couple of hail Marys (or so was the case in my youth), far less dangerous a punishment than being permanently "recorded" (for prison via the NSA?) on the Internet.
Memo to Pope Francis: Please tell Catholics to stop using Facebook and just go to confession.
Oh, I forgot to say, for the literal-minded: just kiddin' -- but actually not that much.
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