The Catholic Church imposes the penalty of excommunication only in the rarest of circumstances. Simply leaving the church does not attract such ire.

Yet people who leave the fold of Apple’s iPhone for the multifarious pagan faiths of Google’s Android operating systems find their communications very ex indeed. Apple’s iMessage, which commandeers texts on iPhones and sends them over the internet to other iPhone users, simply cannot accept the notion that these people have moved on. As a result, messages sent from an iPhone user to a former iPhone user often never arrive. Indeed, such was the frustration of one ex-iPhone user, she brought a lawsuit against the company.

Over the weekend, the powers that be at Apple finally softened their stance on such apostasy. A new webpage allows lapsed iPhone users to confess their sins and pray for release by entering their phone numbers to “deregister” themselves from the book of Jobs. Simply follow this link to reclaim your communications as you set out to wander the wilderness.