"The Internet is an excellent instrument for evangelisation and religious dialogue, but it cannot be turned into an online recycle bin for sins in place of face-to-face confessions, a senior Vatican official said Tuesday." - from an IDG News report
Your Eminence:

I. It was with perfect wisdom that you forbade the taking of communion via Federal Express. In accord with what surely was divine guidance, you similarly banned cell phone administration of last rites. However, I must humbly urge you to reconsider your decision to outlaw the performing of the sacrament of confession through the Internet.

II. Indeed, though we have not solicited it, confessional e-mail has been pouring over the Vatican's virtual transom in great waves. This is not necessarily a bad thing. With so much electronic data, Your Grace, we now have a more accurate picture of our flock than ever before. It turns out that our faithful besmirch themselves a great deal more often, in more ways and with far greater enthusiasm than we had previously had any reason to believe. The demand for absolution is bigger than we even imagined.

III. Admittedly, this situation requires us to bear some new burdens. But this is largely a matter of mere resources. For example: In stark contrast to you, Your Grace, our technical team is in fact deeply fallible. We have found skilled programmers difficult to recruit; apparently they still prefer to be granted options instead of indulgences. Our current techies, meanwhile, just wrote confession-routing software that routinely misdirects venal sins to the mortal department and vice versa. Nor is our current server architecture of exactly Bernini quality. (I am sure this explains why I receive so few of your responses to my e-mails, Excellency.)

The advent of the devilish Blackberry has only made matters more challenging. With some of our more eagerly flagellant believers now requesting forgiveness every 10 minutes, we are often overwhelmed. Of course we are eager to hear immediately about every instance of someone fibbing, cursing or touching themselves. But we simply do not have the bandwidth to respond. Put simply, we need a great deal more VC funding. Vatican City, that is.

IV. Other issues are more ecclesiastical, and we beg your judgment. BCC-ing e-mail feels like a sin of duplicity, but we are not sure. Is the viewing of unclean websites more or less of an offence if one pays the requested fee? It is also worth pointing out that Hail Marys, Our Fathers and other prayers well-suited to repetitious penances are rendered useless with simple "copy and paste" technology. This is probably best tackled by the fellows in repentance services, but I wanted to bring it to your Righteous attention.

V. We might employ some fast-track tactics to make i-confessions work:
i. Implement a CRM (Catholic Relationship Management) solution: The leading provider seems to be Oracle, if you're not unduly bothered by the heathen Greek connotation, or by doing business with Larry Ellison, who, with all due respect, is an even sharper dresser than is Your Beneficence.

ii. Outsource to India: An increasingly popular option in the e-services business, Your Whiteness. Of course we would try to staff our remote contrition centres with as many converts as possible, but it may be necessary to hire some heretics. Muslims, who generally "get" the heaven vs. hell concept, should do fine. Hindus may present more of a training challenge.

iii. Explore Alternate Platforms: We suspect e-mail's lack of immediacy may hinder the validity of a confession. But how about instant messaging? NB: We would want to consider very carefully the possibly confusing signal sent by an AOL/Holy See pact. I frankly do not see how they could have taken over Time Warner without at least a little help from down under, and I do not refer to Rupert Murdoch.

VI. Once you have thought this over, please contact me at my Yahoo address or send me something on vellum, either is fine. Finding the right i-confessions formula will be hard, Holy Father, but I believe it is at least worth giving the old college try.