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Good morning. Until this week I’d not heard of iRights. It’s a campaign to enable young people under the age of 18 to edit and delete content they’ve created online. Already the NSPCC and Barclays are among the charities and companies backing the idea. The Children’s Commissioner is examining the possibility. Social media has meant that an adverse online remark about a first employer or an indiscreet photograph can be accessible years afterwards. Such things can harm a young person’s future. Even if they don’t, they can haunt someone so much their self-confidence is destroyed. Most of us edit our personal histories more than we probably admit. Our CVs and profiles are tailored to focus on the things we think are most positive about us. We don’t usually include past failures and stupidities. But can the delete button really wipe out the unfortunate or unseemly bits of our personal history? I doubt it’s quite so easy, though how we deal with our regrets really matters. The Church has long encouraged confession as an integral part of the Christian life. An acknowledgement of sins and mistakes is met with a declaration of God’s forgiveness. Not deletion but absolution. What’s good about the iRights campaign is that young people will be encouraged to take responsibility for their own past mistakes. Without doing so, none of us can grow as moral beings. Someone who wrote about this a couple of generations ago was the novelist Dorothy L Sayers. She once commented that even in the 1940s she was unusual in reckoning her personal problems were so clearly the result of her own sins and mistakes. She said “most people today look upon themselves as victims of undeserved misfortunes which they have done nothing to provoke.” Sacramental confession - someone making their confession to a priest and receiving God’s forgiveness – has sometimes been criticised for being too formulaic, a bit like pressing a divine delete button. Yet it’s meant to encourage realism about our weaknesses, a way of taking responsibility for our sins and shortcomings, and resolving to live a better life. As I read of young people regretting what they’ve posted online and longing for a fresh start I want to support them. The very act of considering what they regret is a possible first step to a more morally responsible life. I’m rather grateful to have grown up in an era when our adolescent indiscretions were not preserved in an iCloud. Encountering young people worried about their online history I instinctively think “there but for the grace of God go I.” And I expect I’m not alone.