 January 2001
Making Your Web Site "Catechetical", Part 1
The General
Directory for Catechesis is your guide!
What makes a parish, school, or corporate web site
truly catechetical? Whether you have a well-established site, a site-in-progress, or one
in the "dream stage", consider referring to
the General
Directory for Catechesis for hints on how to best use your domain for evangelizing
catechesis.
There are obvious limits to how much a web site can
catechize. After all, this is a task best suited to people! However, there are a
surprising number of things that you can do with a web site that fall rather neatly into
the General Directory's "tasks of catechesis", described in paragraphs
#85-87. This month, I will look at three of the tasks listed there. For each of the tasks,
I will offer some suggestions based upon my experience with web site design.
Task #1: Promoting Knowledge of the Faith
The GDC calls for catechesis to provide a gradual
and comprehensive presentation of the faith, rooted in both Scripture and Tradition. This
is not a short term task for young children, but a lifetime task for all believers.
The Church must take great care to not only form its learners, but to also provide
catechists with the knowledge and tools they need to be credible witnesses to faith.
Based upon this task, a truly catechetical web site
should connect "surfers" to theological resources
that will help them better understand Scripture and Catholic teaching.
This is perhaps the task best suited for the Internet. There is a remarkable body of
Catholic information available on the World Wide Web. The challenge is to sort out the
gold from the dross!
On the Center's
site, we provide links to some of the more reliable information that we have
found on the Web. We also provide original articles each month to help leaders and
catechists of all age groups in their ministry. By offering free, original material
on your web site, you not only provide content that is directed toward your target
audience, but you also contribute to the catechetical mission of the entire World Wide
Web! It is exciting to offer this gift to the world. Some of our catechetical
publishers have caught on to this idea. In addition, a growing number of Catholic
magazines and newspapers offer free content online. This is active adult education. Even
if you cannot offer original content yourself, you can help people find answers online.
When thinking about the design of your web site,
consider how you can form your visitors in knowledge of the faith. What can they learn
about Catholicism through the "portal" that is your site?
Task #2: Liturgical Education
The GDC calls upon us to educate
learners for "full, conscious, and active participation" in the liturgy (#85).
Catechists know the challenge of this task in situations of face-to-face learning. It is
perhaps all the more difficult to translate onto a web site. Even with the obvious
limitations, there is a lot we can do on a catechetical web site to draw people into
liturgy.
Corporate and organizational sites can include content like
that described in the previous section. The pastor or another competent staff member could
offer articles or links to articles on liturgy, sacraments, and prayer. All sites can
offer links to the liturgical calendar, the daily and weekly readings, and even the
Liturgy of the Hours. Parish and maybe even school sites can take this task another step.
Just about all parish sites include Mass times, minister
schedules, and even the Sunday readings for the next week. Some offer an archive of the
pastor's homilies. In addition to these organizational helps, is there anything else you
can do to encourage the parish's participation in the liturgy each week?
A homilist for a given Sunday could pose a question at Mass
the weekend before related to the following week's readings. He would invite people to
respond to the question by mail, fax, telephone, email, or, directly on the parish site.
It is simple enough today to set up discussion forum's or simple guest books where surfers
could read other's comments and leave their own. A portion of the following week's homily
would be devoted to the parish or school's responses to the question. This could continue
the conversation beyond the Sunday celebration, and maybe even create some anticipation
for what would happen at Mass the following week. It would also serve the purpose of
helping the pastor "feel the pulse" of the parish.
On this site, we have had a remarkable response to our Prayer
Request page. Surfers from all parts of the world have left requests. A parish could make
explicit reference to its Prayer Request page in the prayers of the faithful. Or how about
providing links to something timely happening in Mass, whether it be the organization we
are contributing to in a special collection, or the web site of a composer of a
particularly compelling entrance or recessional hymn? With some planning, a web site team
could have plenty of new content to add, content that was pertinent to what was going on
in the life of the community, and content that would bring people back again and again.
Does or will your web site draw visitors into a deeper
appreciation for and celebration of the liturgy? How can you make the connection with what
happens at Mass each week?
Task #3: Moral Formation
In Paragraph 85, The General Directory for Catechesis states:
Conversion to Jesus Christ implies
walking
in his footsteps. Catechesis must, therefore,
transmit to the disciples the attitudes of the
Master himself.
How do we as catechists make this task our own?
How do we make this task happen on a "catechetical" web site?
I believe that, for a web site designer, part of
the answer to this question lies in the "look and feel" of the web site. For
those of you with an existing site, I encourage you to try this (and I am going to try it,
too): Invite someone who has never seen your site to get onto it while you are in the same
room. Ask them to tell you, after surfing your site for just five minutes, what
impressions they have of your school, organization, or parish while doing so.
In looking at your main page, how long
will it take them to get a sense that your organization is about helping people "to
know, to celebrate, and to contemplate the mystery of Christ"(GDC, #85)? This
as a challenge to all of us: parishes, schools, Catholic organizations, and catechetical
publishers. Will the stranger coming upon our site have a sense of our uniquely Christian
pedigree?
Beyond this first impression, there are
other ways that a web site can form a surfer morally. Can you offer, or link to, reliable
Catholic forums where learners of all ages can discuss the challenges of being a Christian
today? Can you use online printed homilies to assist in the forming of conscience? Can you
be a prophetic voice for justice by linking to activities like the March for Life, or
issues surfaced by the U.S. Bishops and the local Catholic Conference?
An exciting way to spread the Good News!
Reflecting upon these first three tasks of catechesis impels me to take
the development of a Catholic web page seriously. This is not just an
alternate way to provide basic information about my organization. It has the potential to
be another "voice crying out in the wilderness", another conduit for bringing
the Gospel to the world.
Next Month:
Three more tasks that make a web site catechetical.
Chris Weber
Director
Catholic Education Ministries of Central Maryland.
Copyright © 2000 by the Catholic Education
Ministries Center of Central Maryland, Emmitsburg, MD 21727. All rights reserved.
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