Lent 2006
by John Feister

(If you don’t have time to read this now, please take note of the buttons on the right. They are free for the taking, for you to use on your Web site. Click on a button to pick up the html code.)

Q U I C K S C A N

Parish Site of the Month
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We’re entering the busiest time of the Church year, the 40 days of Lent that precede a slower, but even more important Easter season. Ash Wednesday is next week, March 1 (finally!). Let us resolve to help people who come to our Web sites find the spiritual nourishment they seek.

We have a lot to share with you. Of course, our Lent feature is renewed and available, with daily activities, readings, FAQs and other resources to back up your own Lenten Web efforts. Last issue, we announced our new Lenten Radio Retreat, which is available for linking from your Web site as well as for radio broadcast. Funded by the USCCB’s Catholic Communication Campaign, each of these half-hour shows includes one of six bishops providing a homily for the Sunday readings as well as a question-and-answer session, and a number of prayers. The show also includes meditative music. There are six Spanish-language retreats as well, provided by bishops who serve the Hispanic community. You can see the list of participating bishops, from all over the country, at
RadioRetreat.org. If you know of any interested broadcasters, by the way, have them send an email to Letters@FranciscanRadio.org.

Other things are happening: March 5 is the Oscar awards, and we’ve created a link for your Web site to Sister Rose Pacatte’s list of favorites from St. Anthony Messenger magazine’s “CineRose” Awards.

Finally, St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, is just around the corner. Feel free to put up a link to our Patrick feature, always a very popular Catholic feature on the Web. Let your visitors share their faith by sending one of our seven St. Patrick’s Day e-cards.

Last but not least, we have a new e-newsletter highlighting content from upcoming radio shows. Sign up at FranciscanRadio.org.

God bless!

John Feister
Editor, AmericanCatholic.org

Parish Site of the Month

St. Rose of Lima (Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown)
Visitors to this site have the opportunity to browse pages using an attractive JavaScript menu or to simply utilize a text-only sitemap. This helps not only those surfing the Web with older browsers but also search-engine robots crawling site pages for keywords. Another useful feature is the "Help!" page where one can find simple answers to common questions on enabling JavaScript, opening PDF files and finding updated church bulletins. Take some time to learn about this church's ministries, fund-raising efforts, upcoming events and more.

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Rosary Army
“Make Them. Pray Them. Give Them Away.” That’s the motto of Rosary Army. Request a free rosary, learn the history of this form of prayer and listen to podcasts “about things going on in our Catholic world.” Want to make a rosary? Watch a how-to video, or simply read text instructions. Sample audio and video clips from the Rosary Army Virtual Workshop DVD, make posts to the online forums and more.

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