Web Catholic-Catholic Webmasters Blog

The Year of Paul, St. Anthony and Fathers

Summer is a good time for parish webmasters to take stock of their sites. Parishes generally go into a slower pace during this season.

“Ordinary time”—that long season that starts at the conclusion of the Easter season, at Pentecost—is a good time to get a jump on what you’ll do with your site when things start up next fall. What is working well? Do you have the right team working on the site? Is there good, solid communication with the pastoral staff? Or, conversely, if the pastoral staff is operating the Web site, is there good communication with folks outside the parish office? The best of parish Web sites represent a kind of balancing act between the parish office and the various parish ministries that would do well to be represented on the parish site.

Here at AmericanCatholic.org, we have developed three features that offer you the chance to post some fresh content in the coming months, without doing a lot of work at your end. You’ll be interested in putting up a link right away to our Father’s Day feature, including special Father’s Day e-Greetings from our Catholic Greetings site. Coming up right before Father’s Day this year is Friday’s feast of St. Anthony of Padua—our own patron here at St. Anthony Messenger Press. He’s among the most popular of Catholic saints—check out our feature and consider linking to it!

Finally, June 29 is the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, and the launch of the Year of St. Paul in honor of the 2,000th anniversary of Paul’s birth. This papally declared, Church-wide celebration is a great way to reintroduce our parishioners to St. Paul, a hugely influential apostle from whom we hear each Sunday in our readings. Who was St. Paul? Why is he important? Was he really a sexist, or has Paul gotten a bad rap? Why is Pope Benedict XVI declaring this to be a year of Pauline appreciation? Your Web visitors will find articles (including a brand-new Catholic Update that will be online later this month) and other useful Web features at our St. Paul feature, which you can link to your own Web site with our attractive link button.

Enjoy the summer! As Paul would encourage each of us to do, “Rejoice in the Lord always!”

Pauline ‘peace’ and Darwin anniversaries

Grace and peace! Pretty good opening line, don’t you think? St. Paul thought so, and introduced some of his many letters with that salutation. 

I bring it up now because the Church is preparing to celebrate the jubilee of the birth of St. Paul, beginning June 29, on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. The jubilee will provide a focal point for the Church that will last a year and will focus on such questions as: Who was St. Paul? Why was his energy as one of the Church’s early founders so important? In what ways do his writings speak to us today? We’re pulling together a feature for Catholic webmasters that will enable you to put a link on your site to content-rich sources that help your Web-site visitors sort out such questions. We’ll include a number of articles, and eventually some audio reflections and even e-greetings to help your visitors share this “Pauline moment.” Heads up!

We’ll get to Father’s Day and more in the next issue of Web Catholic, June 10. I’d like to tell you now about a lesser-known event that will be a growing issue on the religious scene between now and early 2009. February 12, 2009, will mark both the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his earthshaking work, The Origin of Species. The religious right will be up in arms, no doubt, as the media roll out any number of stories on evolution. What’s key for us to understand is that the Catholic Church essentially accepts evolution as a finding of science, which is in a different realm than the findings of theology. To be blunt, Catholics don’t have any problem with evolution, in spite of the uproar that will fly in some corners of Christianity in the coming months. We’ve prepared a news feature, with several articles now and more to be added in coming months, that will help you to inform your visitors about Catholic teaching in this “hot-button” area.

With that, let me wish for you, pioneers of Catholic communication, grace and peace! It’s what St. Paul prayed for those willing to step out and do something entirely new as early Christians!

John Feister
Editor, AmericanCatholic.org

Pope’s U.S. Pilgrimage, Pentecost, Mother’s Day, Mary

With the Easter liturgical season in full flower in the Church, St. Anthony Messenger Press’ AmericanCatholic.org has a variety of resources to help your Web site be a more resource-rich place for the Catholic community.

Pope Benedict XVI brings the international presence of the Church to American shores April 15 – 20. He will be only the second pope in history to meet with the president at the White House and the third to address the U.N. General Assembly. The Holy Father also will visit ground zero, join with Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh and Hindu leaders in interfaith and ecumenical meetings, and celebrate a closing pilgrimage Mass to a packed Yankee Stadium. AmericanCatholic.org will be the place to find up-to-the-minute staff, news service and feature coverage of the pope’s steps and remarks. The button we’ve provided for your Web site will allow you to make the link to our free section.

While we have just experienced the most sacred of Christian celebrations, the sacred Triduum, leading to the celebration of our Lord’s Resurrection, the journey toward the wisdom found in the Holy Spirit at Pentecost continues. You can help visitors to your site understand the meaning of the Easter season, the feast of the Ascension and the power of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Just link to our “From Easter to Pentecost” feature.

Just around the corner is one of the most popular days of the year to send a greeting card—Mother’s Day. We have e-cards from Catholic Greetings that you can link to from your site. Place links to our Mother’s Day e-cards on your site, and help your visitors celebrate and honor the nurturing and faith-filled roles played by mothers everywhere.

Finally, May is the month of Mary, the Mother of God. AmericanCatholic.org has been covering the 150th anniversary of Mary's first apparition to St. Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes. Link your visitors to our material about the healings at this place of pilgrimage, what the Bible says about the Blessed Virgin Mary, what the Church believes about Our Lady and how Catholics can honor her.

These are certainly busy times! You can help your visitors sort through them with the depth and breadth found here at AmericanCatholic.org.

Peace and all good.

Mark Lombard
Managing editor, AmericanCatholic.org

March Saints, Easter and the Pope’s U.S. Visit

Holy Week is just around the corner, but first, the Irish and the Italians have some celebrating to do! In many locations, St. Patrick will be celebrated on March 14 this year, followed by St. Joseph the next day (Palm Sunday is on the 16th). We have e-cards from Catholic Greetings that you can link to from your site. St. Patrick’s Day is one of the most popular days for Catholic Greetings. Place links to our St. Patrick and St.  Joseph e-cards on your site, and help your visitors celebrate their faith-filled heritage,  even as they enter into this holiest of weeks.

Soon we start the most sacred of Christian celebrations,  the sacred Triduum, which starts with Holy Thursday with its institution of the Eucharist. The Triduum continues with the celebration of our Lord’s Passion and death on Good Friday and concludes with the celebration of the Resurrection, beginning with the Easter Vigil. You can help visitors to your site understand the meaning of the Church’s liturgy with a link to our Easter feature.

Did you know that the pope is coming to the United States a few weeks after Easter? April 15-20, Pope Benedict XVI will be in Washington, D.C., and New York City. His trip will also include a speech at the United Nations. We’ll have coverage updated on our site leading up to and during the visit, in the forms of print and audio reports from St. Anthony Messenger editors Susan Hines-Brigger, from D.C., and yours truly, from New York. We’re providing a button for your Web site to make the link to our free section.

Finally, with the election year warming up to be one of the most interesting in decades, we’ve put together news stories about Catholics and the election. We also have a guide to help voters bring their faith to the ballot box, courtesy of Bishop John McCormack of Manchester, N.H. No candidates are endorsed or shunned; but guidance from Catholic social teaching is offered, along with stories as they come to us from Catholic News Service.

Have a blessed Easter!

John Feister

Editor, AmericanCatholic.org

A Busy Season

This is a busy season for parish Webmasters! Lent started at its earliest possible date, barely after the Christmas rush, it seemed. With election season coming into full swing, Catholic voters are going to be searching the Web for answers about this important penitential season. And let’s not forget that Pope Benedict is coming to the United States in April! It’s going to stay busy for a while.

We want to remind you of what AmericanCatholic.org offers this Lent to link to on your parish Web site. First, of course, is our annual feature, “Lent: Call to Conversion,” which has been active since just before Ash Wednesday. As in the past, we offer suggested daily activities, weekly radio homilies, news and inspiration. This year, Father Greg Friedman, O.F.M., has added a warm welcome message that you can check out on YouTube, along with other seasonal videos. Link to it from your site using our attractive link button.

A highlight of our Lent program has become Lenten Radio Retreat, a Catholic Communication Campaign project that features audio homilies by U.S. bishops—six in English, six in Spanish. It’s available at FranciscanRadio.org in both streaming audio and podcasts. We present bishops from all over the country—a very talented group of radio preachers “from the heart of the Church.”

There are two new features in development that you’ll hear more about next month. One focuses on the upcoming elections, specifically on how our faith informs key themes in our national political debate. This will surely be on everyone’s mind between now and November. Also, we’re making plans for a special news section covering the papal visit to Washington, D.C. and to New York, April 15-20. We will have correspondents at both events and good backgrounders in March.

Meanwhile, let’s pray that this Lent be a season of renewal, of deepening faith, for all of us in Web ministry and for the people we serve.

Lent 2008

Wow! Doesn’t it seem as if Christmas is barely over, yet Ash Wednesday and Lent are upon us? That’s because Easter, based on the cycles of the moon since ancient times, falls on a different date each year. This year is the earliest possible Easter; hence the early beginning of Lent. It happens every so often, but well-prepared parish Web sites can handle it!

Ash Wednesday is February 6 this year, just two weeks away. Perhaps we’ll see among our parishioners and beyond a heightened awareness of Christian practice, and certainly a lot of questions about the Catholic faith (like, “Why is Lent so early?”).

That questioning becomes an opening to talk about what Lent should mean and be for all of us. As you no doubt know, Lent is a six-week period for all of us to reflect more deeply upon the saving presence of Jesus in our lives and to weed out everything that stands between us and Jesus. It is the time of preparation for newcomers to enter the Church and has roots in the training of catechumens for initiation. You can read some nice, easy-to-understand Catholic teaching about that in our newly updated Lent feature. I would encourage you to study some of the articles and to place our free graphic links to the with solid Catholic catechesis from our ministry set at the heart of the Church with all of those articles as well as a calendar of suggested Lenten practices to help your visitors stay focused.

This year, we are offering again our Franciscan Radio program, Lenten Radio Retreat, a project of the U.S. bishops’ Catholic Communication Campaign. Each half-hour webcast (available free for local radio broadcast) features one of 12 bishops (six English-speaking, six Spanish-speaking) reflecting on the Sunday gospels. Our American Catholic Radio also has a fresh show each week during Lent with solid inspiration and information. For example, our Ash Wednesday show includes an interview from St. Peter’s in the Loop Parish in Chicago, which has a huge distribution of ashes. All of it (except the ashes!) can be downloaded for mp3 players. Links for both Lenten Radio Retreat and American Catholic Radio are available to enrich your site during the entire season of Lent.

By the middle of next week (a week before Ash Wednesday) we'll be offering a video introduction to Lent by our own Franciscan Father Greg Friedman. (You can see our Advent/Christmas clips there at this writing.) These new Lenten clips will be added to our growing ministry at YouTube. We’ll be linking directly over to it—you can, will make your site more lively and inspiring with solid, trustworthy Lenten features—just in time for Ash Wednesday!

Advent

Advent is here again! Sunday, December 2 is the First Sunday of an Advent that will be shorter than most, with only three full weeks this year and Christmas Eve on Monday after the Fourth Sunday. More and more, we’re seeing that parish Web sites are becoming a key way for parishes to reach out to   their parishioners and beyond: to tell people about the Church, to encourage them to come in person, to inspire them with words of wisdom from the pastoral staff, to help them find times and dates for parish events and, most importantly, to announce the coming of the Kingdom in their midst! Isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

Last week our art director, Connie Wolfer, who designs the many buttons that we offer to you, gave a talk to a group of parish webmasters working in the Cincinnati Archdiocese. Her bottom line: Keep it simple and visually attractive. I hope that we’re able to help you achieve that with our seasonal offerings of link buttons that lead to awesome seasonal features.

We’ve updated our “Advent to Epiphany” feature again this year. We’ve got a new Advent calendar and daily activities, meditations and peacemaking ideas. We’re also offering new Advent and Christmas e-greetings at our ever-popular CatholicGreetings.org. Father Greg Friedman, O.F.M., has produced a few very nice video introductions to the season, which we are posting at YouTube (the Internet keeps evolving!). He also is producing Sunday Soundbites for FranciscanRadio.org, which are linked from our Advent feature.You can add some of these links individually to your site or simply put a link up to the entire feature.

Coming soon in December are the feasts of St. Nicholas (Dec. 6) and Our Lady of Guadalupe (Dec. 12), for which there are e-greetings that you can share with your visitors. We also have an e-greeting for St. Juan Diego (Dec. 9), whose feast this year is superceded by the Second Sunday of Advent.

All Hallows Eve and Feast of All Saints

How can Catholics keep All Hallows Eve from becoming “hollow”? By celebrating Halloween as a Christian holiday linked to the Feast of All Saints and Feast of All Souls. Let your site’s visitors know about the Christian connection to Halloween by linking to our special feature. There, you’ll find the legend of the Jack O’Lantern, ideas for celebrating Halloween with a spiritual twist, and links to our saint feature and online prayer.

Looking Ahead

We are moving into one of the “busy seasons” in parish life. Education programs are in full gear, the important months that end the liturgical year (All Saints and All Souls Day) are not far off and there are all manner of saints’ lives to celebrate. Advent this year will be shorter than some years, since Christmas falls on a Tuesday. It won’t start until December 2, and practically speaking, will be celebrated for three full weeks, then the Fourth Sunday. That’s all a ways off, but smart webmasters look ahead!

There are a few good sites that have all of the liturgical calendars on them. My favorites are the U.S. bishops’ official Liturgical Calendar, which is foolproof and particular to the United States, and the more approachable The Catholic Calendar Page, which I’ve recommended for over a decade. Catholic bookstores also sell nice print products that are handy for keeping track of things related to the Church’s seasons. I use The Liturgical Desk Calendar from Franklin McCormick, and some folks here use the more compact A Light For My Path, which includes daily and Sunday Scripture citations for the Mass readings.

Big on our calendar at AmericanCatholic.org is the feast of St. Francis of Assisi on October 4 and the pet blessings that take place all over the country in the Christian community. We’ve got a popular feature, “St. Francis of Assisi: Patron Saint of Animals and the Environment,” which has lots of new material this year from St. Anthony Messenger’s new special issue (October) on St. Francis. Our feature includes the only national listing of pet blessings, which has grown every year since we started it back in 1997. You can add your listing of place and time.

Thanks to all of you who submitted entries for “Parish Web Site of the Year.” We’ll be announcing the winner in the next issue of Web Catholic and spending some time in coming issues talking about some of the best features on sites that were submitted.

As St. Francis would say, “Peace and all good!”

Six Steps to Better Website

A few of us were sitting around some days back, talking about what makes a good parish Web site. Truth be told, out Web Catholic Parish Web Site of the Year competition got us to thinking again after all these years of parish Web site development. What have we learned? What makes a good parish site? Is there any “secret formula”? For starters, we came up with with six ideas to share with you, and we’d welcome your additions—you can post them in comments here.

Before I pass along our six suggestions, I’d like to tell you about a few features that our Web team has prepared for you to help your Web ministry with coming Church events. First is the feast of Blessed Mother Teresa on September 5. All signs point to this woman, whom many knew as a saint, being someday canonized by the Catholic Church. She remains immensely popular. Our annual feature has been a boost to many sites.

There’s also our back-to-school Web feature, where students and teachers can learn about popular patron saints of education, and send e-greetings to celebrate the new school year. There are also great ideas for teachers and catechetical leaders. This year, we've got a new graphic link for the feature that you can put on your site.

Finally, I’d like to remind those parishes that are holding pet-blessing ceremonies in honor of St. Francis’ feast (October 4) to contact our Web team and get your ceremony added to the Pet Blessings 2007 list.

And don’t forget to send your nominations for the 2007 Web Catholic Parish Web Site of the Year. The deadline is September 1. That brings us back to our opening question. What makes a good parish Web site? Here’s our take:

Six Suggestions for a Great Parish Site

         1. Skip the animated GIFs. It’s a tempting trick, but it gets old quickly on your site. It remains there, flailing about, annoying your visitors.
         2. While you’re at it, skip the audio background music. Yes, we all love Ave Maria, but it loses a little something on the midi sounds, and it also gets old after a short time, especially in the repeat format by the second or third loop. And consider your parishioners checking out the parish site from their cubicles at work—perhaps they didn’t know their volume was set on loud. You get the idea.
         3. Did we mention the background pattern, the one making your text illegible? Once again, just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Better to stick to background colors that don’t compete with the message you’re trying to get people—of all ages and various sight abilities—to read.
         4. Lose the “under construction” signs. They don’t exactly deliver a message of confidence, especially when they are on the site week after week. Wait until your page is ready to publish, then publish it. Then announce the new page on your home page with a link to it!
         5. No crammed-full pages! I admit, this is an ideal for many of us who have so much information. But it you have to scroll and scroll and scroll to read a page, it likely has too much information. Pace yourself and deliver your content in pleasing, digestible amounts.
         6. Do more with less. The best parish Web sites aren’t necessarily the biggest; they are the ones that present what they set out to present in an attractive, simple manner. It is better, in our opinion, to do a small Web site well, than to put in everything you can think of with little care for design or user-friendliness.

Now, tell us your ideas and reactions! Post a comment here!