Yesterday Fr. Chris Decker on the always excellent and geeky fun Catholic Underground podcast coined the germ Godmodding. Modding is a term of art normally used to describe personal modifications to computers, consumer electronics, equipment cases, game software, etc. He used Godmodding to describe how we modify software or use computers to help us in prayer, study of theology, apologetics, and other specific endeavors relating to our faith.
I make extensive use of Godmodding. I use a liturgical calendar in vcs/ics format developed by Fr. Simon on my iPod to view on its calendar. I keep a directory on my harddrive subdivided up in various categories for good articles I find on prayer, apologetics, liturgy, theology, canon law, etc for easy access. You never know when a site might disappear or an article disappear so it is always nice to have a good copy. I use a program called InfoAngel which is a information management tool that saves everything in a database that contains a lot of information that can be easily accessed and searched. InfoAngel is not religiously related itself, though I put it to that end. It stores everything in one file so even if you have hundreds of articles and other notes you can easily use it among multiple computers. Then of course there is all of the Catholic videos, articles, and podcasts that I use and are included in the broad category that Fr. Decker uses Godmodding.
Though I think Godmodding can be used in a non hardware/software case. In reality the process of sanctification is Godmodding. We are slowly, and in my case I mean slowly, modifying ourselves by responding to grace. Growing in the life of virtue we continue to do spiritual Godmodding, to become more like God and grow in perfection of some of his attributes. The saints are not a cookie cutter sanctity where they are all exactly alike. Their commonality is their reflection of Jesus, but they all reflect Jesus in their own personal way. Modding gives a unique and personal stamp on a some personal equipment, but Godmodding in this sense also gives a unique and personal stamp. Now of course deification would be the correct theological term to describe this, but I do think the idea of Godmodding is cool – at least to my geeky sense.
