November 7, 2009
‘Catholics Come Home’ campaign to launch in Advent
By Denise MacLachlan
Herald staff
Carson Weber, associate director for new media evangelization for the Diocese of Sacramento, is the point man on the “Catholics Come Home” advertising campaign. Luis Gris/Herald photo
On Dec. 18, the Diocese of Sacramento will begin airing thousands of prime-time
TV commercials in English and Spanish on network and cable TV stations inviting
inactive Catholics to return to the Catholic Church.
The advertising campaign, called “Catholics Come Home,” will take place during Advent and includes three different commercials, from 30 seconds to two minutes in length, that will air more than 2,300 times in the Sacramento metropolitan area and nearly 2,900 times in the Chico-Redding media markets.
The ads present Catholicism from different perspectives. One offers a historical view, enumerating the church’s accomplishments and noting that the Catholic Church is the largest charitable organization on the planet.
Another ad depicts people at the ends of their lives, viewing a home movie of their behavior over a lifetime, regretting the harm they’ve done to others and wishing they could change their life stories. The briefest ad simply presents the comments of Catholics who have returned to the practice of their faith.
The ads will air in households from Turlock and Twain Harte in the south to Castle Crag and Burney in the north. They will be seen throughout the day, including during prime time, and during popular TV programs such as “Desperate Housewives” and “Monday Night Football.”
“We are reaching out to people where they are,” said Carson Weber, associate director for new media evangelization for the diocese and the point man on the “Catholics Come Home” campaign. And where people are, on an average of five hours each day, is in front of a TV screen, according to recent Nielsen TV ratings surveys.
But the advertising campaign does not stop with TV, Weber said. He hopes that the ads, produced by the non-profit organization Catholics Come Home, will interest people enough to send them to their computers to check out the national Catholics Come Home Web site and a Northern California Catholics Come Home Web site that the Sacramento Diocese will sponsor.
Using media and computer technology to evangelize is a relatively new direction for the Catholic Church, but one that Bishop Jaime Soto firmly supports.
“In a society where people are surrounded by media, those of us charged with the teaching ministry will have to extend the portfolio of communication alternatives just to remain part of the daily lives of Catholics, as well as to evangelize,” the bishop told The Herald.
The potential audience is huge as there are thousands of non-practicing Catholics to evangelize. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, one in four Americans self-identifies as Catholic, but only 25 percent of those Catholics attend Mass every week. One in 10 Americans is a former Catholic.
In the Diocese of Sacramento, the Catholic population is estimated at 957,000, but during the last review of attendance for the diocese in October 2008, only 136,500 attended Mass on a typical Sunday.
To reach Catholics who are inactive, the Sacramento Diocese and nearly a dozen others have turned to the Atlanta-based Catholics Come Home, which produces the TV ads. In 2008, Catholics Come Home tested their ads-and-interactive Web site (www.catholicscomehome.org) approach to evangelization for three weeks during Lent in the Diocese of Phoenix, Ariz., which has 1.1 million Catholics. As of April 2009, the diocese reports 92,000 Catholics returning to the church.
Other dioceses across the nation launching the Catholics Come Home program either this Advent or during Lent next spring include the Archdioceses of Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta and Omaha, as well as the Dioceses of Colorado Springs, Lincoln, Joliet, Rockford, Green Bay, Charlotte, Providence, and Venice, Fla.
The media technology may lead people back to the pews initially, Weber told The Herald, but whether people truly return to the church will depend in part on their experience of the church itself — the people they meet when they go to their local parish.
So Weber has been working extensively with staff members from the 103 parishes in the diocese to help them welcome inactive Catholics back to the Catholic faith.
“Evangelization, at its core is an encounter with Christ,” he noted. People are called to be the face of Christ to one another, he added.
This is not easy when parishioners are rushing out the door after Mass to get on with the rest of their weekend, he observed. Newcomers walking may not always feel welcomed, he said.
Weber is training “welcoming committees” or “hospitality teams” — parish volunteers who plan supportive ways of responding to inquiring former Catholics. His office provides materials to offer at tables in the back of churches, banners to display over church doors, suggestions for weekly meetings with inquirers, and DVDs of the ads themselves for parishioners to view before the Dec. 18 initial air date.
At St. Joseph Marello Parish in Granite Bay, Oblate Father Arnold Ortiz, pastor, screened the ads before Masses during Christmas last year. He wanted to reach Catholics who only attend Mass at Christmas and Easter, according to parishioner David Parkes. Parkes was part of a parish hospitality committee that arranged weekly inquiry meetings for the people who responded to the ads.
It was a blessing to be involved with Catholics Come Home, even in the small way that St. Joseph Marello Parish tried it out last year, Parkes said. “People were very moved by being able to come back to the church,” he said. “It was a privilege to be part of their journey.”
Father Humberto Gomez, pastor of St. Mary Parish in Vacaville, is gearing up for the media campaign during Advent. He is excited about the campaign, because it opens doors for Catholics who have been away. He added that the Web site component is absolutely essential.
“People will be intrigued, but maybe not ready to walk into a church until they have more information,” Father Gomez said. Divorced Catholics for example, may think they’ll be rejected for being divorced, he explained. The regional Web site gives people a way to get some of their initial questions answered before risking a visit to an actual church, Father Gomez said.
But when they are ready to visit St. Mary Parish, the community there will be ready to welcome them. Father Gomez plans to show the ads to his parishioners beforehand in English and in Spanish, and have materials in both languages at the welcoming table in the church foyer. When the media campaign begins, greeters will be available to answer questions, again in both languages, and Father Gomez will meet with any returning Catholic who wants to talk with him.
“Hospitality is very important,” Father Gomez said. “We want people to feel at home.”
To pay for the Catholics Come Home advertising blitz, the Sacramento Diocese is raising $440,000 in private donations.
Bishop Soto said Catholics in the diocese continue to give generously to the charitable works of the church, and that the Catholics Come Home ads are supported by members of the community who believe that this is another opportunity to reach out to people in need.
“The investment made to Catholics Come Home is dwarfed by the sacrifices for and resources given to assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate children in faith,” the bishop said. “Along with caring for the physical needs of people, we are also called to bring a comforting and saving word to the sick and weary.”
As with many things in the church, he added, the answer is not “either-or”: either the church take cares of the poor or the church evangelizes. “The answer is ‘both-and,’” he said.
