PROVIDENCE – An advertising campaign aims to bring Catholics back to church during the Christmas season with bilingual ads airing on major television networks beginning Friday and running through Jan. 8, 2012.
The campaign, sponsored by the Atlanta-based organization Catholics Come Home, will target 250 million television viewers in more than 10,000 U.S. cities.
In Rhode Island, the 30 and 60-second ads will air on WJAR, WPRI, TNT, TBS, USA, CNN, the Hallmark and Weather channels and during 20 bowl games televised on the Dish Network.
The ads, which will air during prime time – focus on the richness and history of the Catholic Church and highlight Catholic traditions of prayer, education and help for the poor.
Msgr. Jacques Plante, director of the diocesan Office of Evangelization and Pastoral Planning, said the commercials, a version of which first aired in Rhode Island in late 2009, have been very effective in encouraging people to discuss their faith and have prompted some people to return to the church.
He added that the 2010 Mass count showed an increase in the number of Catholics attending Mass from the previous year.
“The series of commercials have sparked a Catholic consciousness for the need to evangelize and to bring the Gospel to others,” he said, adding, “Evangelization is everyone’s work.”
Msgr. Plante said active Catholics who view the commercials should engage family members, co-workers and friends in discussions about the ads, and invite those who do not attend Mass to return to the church.
He compared evangelization to the parable of the mustard seed, and emphasized that “little things” such as taking the time to share one’s faith and living according to Gospel values, “always bears a rich harvest.”
He added that the television campaign would augment the work of the recently established Diocesan Evangelization Committee in their efforts to promote evangelization and strengthen parish life.
Father William Ledoux, pastor of St. Mary Church, Pawtucket, said the first series of commercials resulted in a “slight increase in parish attendance” and prompted several individuals to seek full initiation into the Catholic Church through the process of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults.
“The media is so important nowadays,” Father Ledoux said, noting that he believes that television is a good vehicle to drive the important message of evangelization home to Catholics.
Father Ledoux said that St. Mary continues to receive new parishioners as a result of the diocesan Year of Evangelization and the Catholics Come Home television commercials.
“The seeds were planted and now we see the harvest,” he emphasized. During Advent, the parish is sending an invitation to all 850 registered families, inviting them to “Come Home for Christmas” and encouraging them to bring family members and friends who do not regularly attend Mass to the Christmas liturgy.
According to Msgr. Plante, pastors received notification of the new commercials, and have been encouraged to inform parishioners in church bulletins or from the pulpit.
In a recent report, Catholics Come Home highlighted the number of Catholics who do not attend Mass, citing a recent study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University that said only 33 percent of U.S. Catholics attend weekly Mass, or put another way, 42.7 million Catholics, or two-thirds, do not attend Sunday Mass.
Other statistics cited included how many hours per week the average American is "consuming media" particularly via TV and the Internet (38 hours); and how many Americans now describe themselves as nonreligious/secular (13. 2 percent of the total population, up 110 percent from 1990 to 2000).
