Thanksgiving, Advent, St. Nick, Mary and Vatican II
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
Worth a Click

Does it strike you as odd that so many U.S. parishes have well-attended Masses on Thanksgiving, which is not a holy day of obligation? It says something about the true importance of this day for American families and communities to stop for a moment and take stock of things around us. The word eucharist, after all, is Greek for “thanksgiving.” Might there be a connection? You can help your visitors nourish that connection with a link to our Thanksgiving feature (some “food for thought” before or after the banquet!), or to CatholicGreetings.org, which offers faith-sharing e-greetings, free of charge.

We’re entering our busiest season of the Church year, the Christmas holidays. Seat belts, everyone! These days ought to be some of the most trafficked days of the year on your parish Web site.

Advent, which starts on Sunday, November 27, is a rich time for people to prepare for Christmas in the best way: to get more closely in touch with their Catholic faith, to make amends in their families and community. You can help your parishioners stay connected to the deepest meaning of the pre-Christmas season that is celebrated throughout our society with all manner of meaning. Our Advent feature, updated and refreshed, is available once again as a beautiful graphic link for your site. This year we have a new set of meditations and Sunday Soundbites, all tailored to the Gospel readings for Year B, which begins on the First Sunday of Advent. We have daily activities, too, a favorite from last year, along with links to various other faith-building resources, including Catholic e-cards. Finally, you’ll see links to our Advent and Christmas audio programs from American Catholic Radio.

Early in December, on December 6, is the feast of St. Nicholas of Myra, the real man behind Santa Claus. Our St. Nicholas greeting card is very popular at this time of year. It contains a link to an article explaining the real St. Nick.

Right after that, on December 8, is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, celebrating Mary’s special role in salvation history.

Finally, December 8, marks the 40th anniversary of the end of Vatican II. St. Anthony Messenger created a special issue on the event and put all of it on the Web. You can put a link that will help your Web visitors understand more deeply where we are as a Church today, 40 years after the Council.

John Feister
Editor, AmericanCatholic.org

Parish Site of the Month

St. Helen Catholic Church (Diocese of Austin)
The online home of St. Helen Catholic Church is a good example for webmasters wanting to accentuate, not overpower, Web content with photographs and art. The site's masthead consists of a simple flash animation and rollover navigation buttons. Photographs showing the parish, its members and activities rotate on the site's homepage, giving it a fresh look for visitors. (Reload the page a few times to see the effect.) Also, eye-catching graphics sit on the right margin promoting various areas within the site worth visiting. These include pages on St. Helen, the church’s Capital Stewardship Campaign and parish members who are currently serving in the armed forces.

Worth a Click

The Robinson Report
The Catholic Spirit, the newspaper of the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese, entered the world of blogging with the development of The Robinson Report, a “look at the world of Catholic media, especially Catholics newspapers and news outlets that use the Web for communication.” Those too busy to check out the numerous sources for Catholic news can stay informed with the Web blog’s informal, yet informative, look at national and international events and selected links to complete stories from a variety of Web sources.

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