When the National Conference of Catholic Bishops took a tentative step into the world of the secular media last year, religion did not even make the script.
The bishops conference produced a television public-service announcement showing a tearful young woman apologizing to her father, then pulling back to reveal that she is talking to a coffin.
The ad’s themes of repentance and reconciliation were right in line with Pope John Paul II’s Jubilee Year message. But viewers wouldn’t make that connection from the ad.
“It’s a sad commentary, but overt references to God or Jesus Christ or faith probably would drop those public-service announcements to the bottom of the (TV stations’) pile,” explained David Early, a communications specialist and spokesman for the bishops conference in Washington, D.C.
Compare that to the text of a radio address produced by the Archdiocese of Chicago for broadcast on both Catholic and secular radio stations in the city:
“My purpose in these talks is not simply to inform you, though I hope they are informative,” says Rev. Robert Barron, a seminary professor in Mundelein and one of the archdiocese’s most respected homilists. “My purpose is not simply to beguile you or entertain you, though I hope they are interesting.
“My purpose in these talks is to convert you.”
That is the introduction to six weekly addresses to be broadcast on Catholic Family Radio AM 820 and news-talk station WMAQ-AM 670 through the lenten season. Though the secular audience on WMAQ is limited by the 5 a.m. time slot, those who do tune in cannot miss the message.
The talks are scriptural discussions–homilies, really–chock-full of references to Catholic heavyweights like St. Augustine and St. Theresa of Avila, Dante and G.K. Chesterton. Barron refuses to soft-pedal his message, delving into topics such as sin and spiritual warfare.
That is not the archdiocese’s only foray into the secular media, either. This year as last year, Cardinal Francis George has recorded brief radio spots welcoming listeners into the church.
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And this week, the archdiocese announced a two-year $1 million campaign to recruit candidates for the priesthood, using billboards, TV ads, an Internet site and posters.
Here, too, the message is direct and religious: “If you’re waiting for a sign from God, this is it.”
Auxiliary Bishop Gerald Kicanas, who is spearheading the recruiting campaign, said that early reactions have been encouraging. The first billboard to go up in the city has merited a fair amount of comment, businesses have been eager to help out and focus groups said the campaign was right on target.
“People were quite enthusiastic about the church using the media,” Kicanas said. “Many thought it was important for the church to be `with it.’ “
There are several explicit reasons the archdiocese is now plunging into direct appeals to the public, Catholic and non-Catholic–an approach it has not used a great deal over the years.
First, officials are doing it because they can. Local businesses are doing most of the work on the priesthood campaign for free. Without that, Kicanas said, it could not happen.
Also, the year 2000 is a special one in the Catholic Church. The pope has said that the Jubilee Year is to be a year of evangelization, above and beyond what the church usually does.
But there may also be an underlying, unspoken sense that just as the Catholic Church in the United States is winning a culture war of one kind, it is losing another.
It is winning in the sense that Catholics now see themselves as an accepted part of American society. Serious-minded attacks against Catholicism in the U.S. are few and elicit little reaction among Catholics themselves, as Sen. John McCain learned in his failed attempt to create a backlash against Gov. George W. Bush’s appearance at anti-Catholic Bob Jones University.
At the same time American culture has accepted Catholics, it has become almost dismissive of Catholicism. Sometimes the church and its doctrine are the subject of jokes; at other times, they seem to fade into the backdrop altogether.
Even in a place like Chicago, where the Catholic presence is so big as to be unavoidable, its impact on culture is quiet and, over the decades, has been waning.
The archdiocese may seek converts and seminarians with its new media campaigns, but it is also using these extraordinary means to change the culture itself, at least in some small way.
And by using familiar media, language and tone, the church is doing what it has done with remarkable success around the world for nearly 2,000 years–working on the culture from within, using the culture’s own tools.
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