CatholicTV: How to Keep Advent in Your Heart

CatholicTV’s talk show “This is the Day” will feature Father Paul Turner, a priest from Missouri this Friday, December 5th. He will discuss Advent themes from scripture as well as how we can celebrate the entire Advent season. Father Turner is the pastor of St. Munchin parish-St. Aloysius parish in Cameron, Missouri. More information about Father Turner may be found on his website: www.PaulTurner.org

Also featured on the show will be Heather King, author of the book Redeemed. Ms. King writes candidly about how challenging and rewarding it can be to live out the faith as an American woman. In her interview, she speaks openly about her many struggles including difficulties with alcohol abuse and even abortion. She talks about how she stays centered on God and open to his help despite being a sinner. She mentions her unique idea that addiction is a sign of spiritual thirst which addictions aim to quench but cannot. Additional references about Heather’s writings and faith journey is available on her website: http://heather-king.com/

You can see Heather’s interview as well as Father Paul Turner’s at www.CatholicTV.com. The interview is on live at 10:30AM Eastern and rebroadcast at 8PM on Friday, December 5th. The interview will be available in the video archives at http://www.CatholicTV.com.

Friday's “This Is The Day” is rebroadcast throughout the weekend (Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 6 p.m. and Sunday at 6:30 p.m.). A new live show airs Tuesday at 10:30AM. The show can also be seen on demand at www.CatholicTV.com or downloaded via iTunes and SQPN. The hosts discuss various topics of the week and respond to viewer mail (you may email the show at thisistheday@CatholicTV.org.

Flocknote.com: Catholic Leaders Go Web 2.0

A new Catholic website was launched this month, providing diocesan, parish and lay organization leaders with an innovative way to share information with their groups.

On Flocknote.com, Catholic leaders can create “feeds” for every group that they lead. Group members are then invited to subscribe to feeds of interest and choose to receive notes by email, text message, Facebook – or on the website itself.

Up until now, many Catholic groups have used email mailing lists and church bulletins to communicate with interested members.

“The power of this site is that it aligns perfectly with the structure of The Church,” says Matt Warner, Flocknote creator, “Never before has it been easier for bishops to communicate with their entire diocese, pastors to share info with their entire parish – and parishioners to plug into their parish community.”

Flocknote is attracting more than Church leaders. Catholic musicians, bloggers, speakers and other laymen have also found the site to be instrumental in sharing their ministry.

Not to be confused as just another social networking site, Flocknote had created a unique niche, serving as both a high-tech mailing list – and a supplement to popular sites like Facebook.

“At the end of the day,” Warner continued, “people truly want to be plugged in to their Catholic community – we just don’t always have the time to do it. Flocknote changes that. Now everyone can get the information they need in the most convenient way possible.”

CatholicTV's "Your Catholic Broadband Network"

CatholicTV launched a new website today, appropriately dubbed “Your Catholic Broadband Network.” The site is an amazing collection of the video archives of the station along with a live Flash video stream powered by Internap and an array of the best of Catholic blog, podcasts and ‘viewer-generated” video..

In addition, a new monthly schedule will be provided in the station’s free magazine, “The CatholicTV Monthly” with frequent updates and new programmatic additions. Some of those additions are a collection of sixteen Rosaries recorded around the nation. From the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles to the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame to the glory of a New England autumn, these new HD Rosaries will greatly enhance the prayer life of the CatholicTV audience.

Beginning on the first Sunday of Advent the Mass from the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at the University of Notre Dame will be televised live weekly on CatholicTV at 10 a.m. Sundays (ET) beginning November 30, 2008. The Mass from Notre Dame is also streamed live and archived online at CatholicTV.com.

“We are pleased to partner with CatholicTV to provide the 10:00 a.m. Mass from the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame each Sunday morning. CatholicTV has strong East coast distribution and a strategy for growing its cable audience on a nationwide scale. We are firmly committed to bringing quality Catholic liturgies to a national and global audience,” said Rev. Richard V. Warner, C.S.C., director of Campus Ministry.

Notre Dame broadcasted Mass from the Basilica on the Hallmark Channel from 2002 until June 2008, and also on DIRECTV in 2007. The Basilica staff has received thousands of enthusiastic and appreciative letters and messages from viewers across the country since June requesting that television carriage continue for the Mass. Many viewers are unable to attend Mass at their local parish for physical reasons and others tell of how Notre Dame’s Mass enriches the experience of their local parish liturgy.

The University's Liturgical Choir, under the direction of Dr. Gail Walton, provides music for the 10 a.m. Sunday Mass during the academic year, while the Basilica Community Collegium Choir, under the direction of Dr. Andrew McShane, provides the music for the liturgy when academic year classes are not in session. Special technical effort has been made to capture the voices as they are heard by the congregation in the Basilica. Masses at Notre Dame are marked by the full participation of the assembly in the liturgy. Each Sunday the Basilica is usually filled to capacity for its regularly scheduled liturgies.

The audio and video equipment installed in the Basilica has been designed to be architecturally sensitive to the beauty of the Basilica and to ensure that the broadcasts capture the beauty of the liturgy without disrupting the sanctity of prayer. Technical production of the Mass is provided by Pentavision Communications Inc., which operates the broadcast equipment from a specially designed control room located in the basement of the Basilica. WNDU-TV sends the broadcast via fiber optics to CatholicTV’s master control.

More information on the Basilica of the Sacred Heart is available at http://basilica.nd.edu/, including the ability to download Mass on the Internet, view readings and music texts online, learn about the many Basilica choirs, take a virtual tour of the Basilica, and much more.

CloisteredLife.com Attracts Visitors

After only three weeks since its launch, a redesigned website on Catholic religious communities has nearly tripled its number of web visitors from the previous month.

CloisteredLife.com, which focuses on religious communities whose main focus is prayer, rather than outside work, has seen more than 1,300 unique page visits in November since its launch Nov. 5.

“Much of the interest came in the website’s treatment of Pro Orantibus Day, Nov. 21, a day of prayer for those in cloistered communities, since the site carried resources to celebrate that day,” stated Kevin Banet, president of TreeFrogClick, Inc., which expanded the website from 12 to 20 pages.

“This shows how much interest there is in not only religious life, but in the life of those in monasteries and hermitages who are totally dedicated to God in prayer, silence and hiddenness,” he said.

The website features new pages of testimonies of sisters who found their vocation, as well as literature and other resources on the contemplative and cloistered life. It can be seen at www.cloisteredlife.com.