ROSWELL, Ga. — Graduate student Andy Woods first heard a Catholics Come Home advertisement on Sacred Heart Radio in Cincinnati a few weeks ago while in his car running errands. When he returned home, he watched the television version on YouTube.
“It was really well done,” said Woods. “You see the Mormon ads popping up all over online. This is something the Catholic Church should be doing. It’s important for the Church to use the same forms of media that constantly attack it to evangelize and defend itself.”
Woods forwarded the ad to his mother, who then forwarded it to her sisters.
Come mid-December, those ads, which have been utilized in 30 dioceses, will air nationally on prime-time network television for the very first time. Beginning Dec. 16 and running through the feast of the Epiphany, Jan. 8, the ads will air more than 400 times, reaching more than 250 million television viewers in over 10,000 U.S. cities and every diocese.
The ads are the work of the Roswell, Ga.-based Catholic apostolate Catholics Come Home. Founded by former advertising executive Tom Peterson, the nonprofit launched pilot campaigns in Phoenix and Lexington, Ky., in 2008, after experiencing tremendous success with a television advertising campaign in Phoenix 10 years earlier.
“That campaign brought at least 3,000 people back to the Catholic Church,” said Ryan Hanning, coordinator of the Office of Adult Evangelization for the Diocese of Phoenix.
Since that time, Catholics Come Home has created a variety of professional advertisements and a comprehensive website that provides links to local parishes and Mass times and explanations of the faith. Catholics Come Home has partnered with, and run their ads in, 30 dioceses across the country, including Chicago, Seattle, Sacramento, Calif., Corpus Christi, Texas, and Colorado Springs, Colo. During Lent 2011, Catholics Come Home partnered with 12 dioceses, including Boston, Lafayette, La., St. Louis, Venice, Fla., and Winona, Minn.
“This pastoral tool is a useful method for the re-evangelization of our society,” said Venice Bishop Frank Dewane. “Through the positive use of media [this has] given expression to the Church’s outreach to her wandering sons and daughters.”
“Some parishes experienced upwards of a 30% increase in Mass attendance,” said Carson Weber, associate director for new-media evangelization in the Archdiocese of Sacramento. “Those parishes that did more work saw results.”
‘Looking for Hope’
According to research conducted where the ads have aired, there has been an average increase in Mass attendance of 10%, and more than 300,000 Catholics have returned to the Church.
Based on that data, organizers are hopeful that as many as 1 million Catholics could return to the Church as part of this Advent’s national campaign. The organization’s bilingual 30-second “Epic” ad is scheduled to air on CBS, NBC, Univision, TBS, USA, TNT, CNN, Fox and other networks during shows such as 60 Minutes, NCIS, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, The Tonight Show With Jay Leno and The O’Reilly Factor, as well as major sports events and highly rated sitcoms.
The ad highlights the history, beauty and spiritual richness of the Catholic faith. It invites Catholics to return home to their parishes and provides the Catholics Come Home website, which is CatholicsComeHome.org.
“People are looking for hope,” said Catholics Come Home’s Peterson. “You can’t go wrong by putting out the Good News. If it saves just one soul, the Good Shepherd says it’s worth doing.”
The $3-million campaign is the result of fundraising by each of the 30 dioceses that have partnered with Catholics Come Home, and also the contributions of more than 35,000 parishioners nationally.
The Archdiocese of Sacramento was the third diocese in the country to partner with Catholics Come Home. In 2009, the necessary funding was raised through second collections, the Knights of Columbus and other private donors. They ran an advertising campaign at the end of that year.
“To run a local campaign, a great deal of money has to be raised,” said the archdiocese’s Weber. “As part of what’s raised in each diocese hosting a local campaign, 15% of everything we raised was set aside for a national campaign. It’s really neat to see the fundraising we did so long ago come together as a part of this national campaign.”
“It will encourage and embolden Catholics who are active. Non-Catholics will inquire into the Catholic faith, and we’ll see inactive Catholics come back to the sacraments,” explained Weber.
“Of those who’ve returned to the Church, 90% have said they didn’t have a reason for leaving,” said Peterson. “Those who’ve returned have said they’ve done so because they were invited.”
With the average American watching 38 hours of television each week, Peterson sees TV as a place where the Church needs to be.
“It makes sense to harness the power of TV and the Internet to spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth,” said Peterson. “When we do, it works.”
Tim Drake writes from St. Joseph, Minnesota.
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False advertising. Every ad should include a warning telling women to read about the Maria Goretti cult, including their perverse belief that rapists somehow can make women and children guilty of “impurity,” and, especially, highlighting the fact that so-called feminist JPII participated in and endorsed the sickening mispresentation of Goretti’s story as being about “sin” or “purity” instead of RAPE and VIOLATION.
I tried being Catholic again for three years, and left within three DAYS of finding out about the sickening, disgusting Goretti hymen cult.
It’s true, guys. It’s really, really true. CATHOLICS HATE WOMEN. CATHOLICS HATE WOMEN. CATHOLICS HATE WOMEN.
Kell, You obviously have had some terrible experiences yourself, but you are mistaken about this. Maria Goretti begged her attacker not to commit a sin, as it would have been for HIM. Then she forgave him before her death, leading to his total conversion of heart. I agree that sometimes this is misrepresented, but as there are a billion Catholics in the world, it is easy to find a group sharing just about any idea.
Catholics recognize the contributions of women as no other faith does. Teresa of Avila, Therese of Liseieux, and Catherine of Siena are considered Doctors, the highest level of teacher. Mother Seton founded the US Catholic school system; Mother Cabrini, the social service system. St. Joan of Arc is the only women to have commanded the military forces of a major nation, and she did it while still a teenager. Teresa of Calcutta led spiritual exercises in the Vatican. These are just a handful of the many stories.
No there faith can claim this type of influence by women. You are mistaken. The Catholic Church does not hate women.
Virginia you forgot about the one woman who is above all other creatures, Mary the Mother of God. Women carry a unique stature in the Catholic heart.
As far as Kell, I’ll quote Archbishop Fulton Sheen, “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”
Kell,
Not only does the Catholic Church not hate women, it puts a woman, the Mother of God, on a higher pedestal than any man.
The shame is that the bishops are so inept that it takes a random layperson like this guy to pull this off.
God Bless.
Love the article.
One question though: “With the average American watching 38 hours of television each week…” Um, are you joking about this stat, or is it a misprint? Who could ever possibly watch that much TV in a week??? That’s nearly as much TV as a full-time job. More than 5 hours a day, “on average.” Really? I watched 4-5 hours this past week, and that was A LOT more than normal for me.
Also, while Goretti is off the topic of this article, I will add my opinion to that important matter. While on some level, I understand her heroic virtue and desire to preserve her own purity as well as uncommon concern for her attacker soul (Though, he did murder her - could we say then that rape is even worse a crime than murder, if her empathy for his soul drew him from this sin of rape to the sin of murder?) The story’s presentation troubles me too. First, she’s held up as a model of virtue for choosing death over being forcibly violated. So, it’s better to be dead than raped? Not all women have that choice. Are those women then somehow “less pure and virtuous,” because they were not able to “prevent” another from taking what they did not want to give? What message does that send to women who have been violated?
The problem then, is not so much even the Goretti story and how it has been portrayed, but also the lack of any “saintly” and heroic figures who can be held up as role models, as “virtuous women” and “models of purity and chastity” amidst the tragic circumstances that tore from them, that which they did not choose to give up.
I’ve looked into this myself previously, but have not found any examples in the Catholic Church history any female saints who were actually sexually assaulted, and then had to live with the emotional, spiritual and psychological repercussions of that for the rest of their life, saints who were not somehow spared this fate either by either death or murder.
Kell, my only advice is - go back to church – you don’t have to go back for the people in it, they are mostly miserable, but go back for Jesus in the Eucharist. Go to be with Him. He knows suffering. He had his Agony in the Garden with such intense emotional, spiritual and psychological suffering, that it caused him to sweat blood. In even the most intense mental suffering that I’ve been through, I haven’t yet come to that point.
Jesus wants to hear from you. Express your anger about the Church and about the Goretti matter to Him in prayer. He will listen. He wants to hear from you. If you’re angry, that’s ok! He can take it! Wherever you’re at in your personal and spiritual journey, go to Him in prayer, and ask Him to be with you. Ask Him to be with you in your spiritual and personal struggles. Ask Him to come into these painful thoughts and feelings and experiences. He wants to meet you wherever you’re at. Tell Him exactly what makes you mad. And ask for a response. And listen. He may be completely silent. But, He IS there.
Just don’t give up. Keep this dialogue going!!
I get your anger. I’ve completely been there! Don’t worry, you are not alone! I really, really, have been there, and agonized over my membership in the Church, feeling despair and feeling completely alone.
People in the Church - even popes and priests and lay people, and “holy” people - they may have good intentions, but they sometimes lack the empathy we desperately need, to articulate in nuance the reality of a story - because sometimes the empathy needed to articulate the nuance and truth well, is an empathy and sensitivity that can only be gained by painful experiences - the type of painful experiences we wouldn’t even wish on our enemies.
The Pope can be wrong sometimes. He’s important, but your relationship with God is much more important than what he has said. Don’t let his words interfere with that. I acknowledge that there is legitimate pain that can come from hearing the words he wrote/said in regards to Goretti. Holy people need God’s mercy too, because they fail too, in spite of their best efforts. God is bigger than anything anyone says, or fails to say. It is painful, but God knows the full truth of that story, and the truth is bigger than anyone can fully describe. And God will not deny your pain and suffering. All pain and suffering is legitimate, and it is right to acknowledge that, and the mistakes others make that perpetuate that pain.
Salmon,
The 38-hour figure struck me as shocking as well, but according to CNN, it’s accurate. You’ll see in this 2009 story that television viewing is at an all-time high, at about 151 hours per month.
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-02-24/entertainment/us.video.nielsen_1_nielsen-company-nielsen-spokesman-gary-holmes-watching?_s=PM:SHOWBIZ
When you consider that most homes now have multiple televisions, that many homes leave a television (in the kitchen, for example) on all the time, and the introduction of DVRs, it’s probably quite accurate.
You know, Brian (comment 11/16/11) it has also taken a Mother Angelica to do their job as well. My understanding is that although nuns are vowed religious, they are techincally still classified as “Laity” by the Church since they are not “clergy.”
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