WASHINGTON — Catholic communications in all forms — print,
digital, broadcast, social media — are essential to informing the Catholic
faithful about the Catholic Church, two church communicators said.
“Now more than ever, when there’s such a barrage of secular
news, how does a Catholic sort out the church’s position?” said Mary Ross
Agosta, communications director for the Archdiocese of Miami. “We cannot depend
on the secular press to tell our story. We need to be in that game, the media
business, to tell our story, our teachings and our traditions.”
Billy Atwell, chief communications officer in the Office of
Communications in the Diocese of Arlington, echoed that view.
“When you look around and read the news, there are a lot of
things to be concerned about,” he said.
But the Catholic Church’s values are not “the values of the
culture” and “are not reported well in the secular press,” Atwell said.
Church communication in all its forms is the “primary vehicle for taking
our voice as individuals and the church” and tell “the good stories
within a diocese and make them known to more people.”
Support for Catholic communications comes from U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops’ Catholic Communication Campaign. The annual collection to
support the CCC will be taken at Masses June 1 and 2, which is World
Communications Day.
“We have this collection every year to help with the
communications efforts of the diocese and also the work of the church in the
United States,” said Bishop Michael F. Burbidge in his most recent “Walk Humbly”
podcast.
“We benefit directly from this collection. We’re recording right
now in a brand-new studio where we record our podcasts, our videos and the WTOP
radio spots because of the generosity of this collection,” he said.
“It helps us to follow that mandate of proclaiming the Good News
to all people,” said Bishop Burbidge, who is chairman of the USCCB Committee on
Communications. “If people are able, I would certainly appreciate their
generosity with this collection.”
“The mission to proclaim the Gospel, entrusted by Jesus to
the apostles, has been carried to us today through our baptism. We continue to
share the good news and help one another encounter Christ through all available
means — whether it be through the internet, radio, television or another form
of communication,” said Bishop Gregory J. Hartmayer of Savannah, Ga., chairman
of the USCCB Committee on Communications’ Subcommittee on the Catholic
Communication Campaign
He made the comments in a statement encouraging U.S. Catholics to
help with this mission by giving to the CCC collection. The subcommittee
oversees the collection and an annual CCC grants program.
Fifty percent of funds collected for the CCC remain in each
diocese to support local communications efforts. The other half is used to
support national projects in the United States and in developing countries
around the world.
On the national level, the CCC supports the production of daily
video Scripture reflections featured on the USCCB website that are viewed daily
by millions of people and a YouTube channel that has 23,000 subscribers. The
USCCB’s website — usccb.org — is itself supported by the CCC; it served 17.5
million users last year.
Atwell said the diocesan communications department “really
strives” to use a lot of digital media in addition to traditional print,
the Arlington Catholic Herald, “to evangelize and spread the Gospel. We
use the CCC as a way to really chart new paths forward to achieve those
goals.”
Having the new studio has helped broaden the diocese’s
evangelization efforts, Atwell said. The diocese wants to use whatever tools it
can “to reach the broadest possible audience,” he added.
Other CCC-funded media efforts include the diocese’s
#LoveOurMothers social media campaign leading up to Mother’s Day this year and
celebrating May as the month of Mary. It featured four especially heroic
mothers who have relied on or used diocesan and Catholic Charities programs.
In the Archdiocese of Miami, CCC funds make possible a variety of
projects, according to Ross Agosta, including a 30-minute Spanish Mass her
office produces and airs for the homebound. Funding covers the cost of an
outside video team that films the Mass in a small mission church of the
archdiocese. She added the Mass project also benefits from “a great
partnership with Univision,” the Spanish-language TV network.
Funds from the CCC collection help support the archdiocesan
website as well as provide social media training for pastors and assist the
archdiocese in producing its two newspapers — the English language Florida Catholic and Spanish-language La Voz Catolica.
Ross Agosta said both newspapers are vital to keeping all
Catholics of the archdiocese informed, adding that La
Voz Catolica does not carry just translations of English stories but has
coverage of special interest to the Spanish-speaking community. The
three-county archdiocese, with a general population of more than 4.7 million,
is home to many Spanish-speaking immigrants, she noted.
“We’re very blessed that people are extremely generous”
to the CCC, Ross Agosta added.
Find out more
For more about the CCC go to usccb.org/ccc.
