19TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME : CATHOLIC COMMUNICATIONS CAMPAIGN - "HELP US CONNECT THE WORLD WITH GOD'S WORD"..........

Parishes throughout the Sacramento Diocese today are taking up a second collection for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Catholic Communications Campaign. We are being asked today to help the American Bishops, "Connect the World With God's Word". The Catholic Church in the United States has continued doing that from the foundation of our country. The pastoral letters of the first American Bishop, +John Carroll in Baltimore, more than two centuries ago, and those of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops since that time forward, to a plethora of publications : magazines, newspapers, books, laid the grundwork for communicating, evangelizing, and catechizing, beyond the pulpit and the classroom. Then in the past century the use of radio and television were a further effective means, in the 1920's and 1930's, Father Charles Coughlan from Detroit, was known as the (Catholic) Radio Priest, doing his weekly broadcasts. In the 1950's Bishop Fulton Sheen, took up the mantle on television with a weekly program that vied opposite the king of television at that time, famed comedian Milton Berle, and ultimately Bishop Sheen bested 'Uncle Miltie', and even won an Emmy Award for his weekly ferverinos of faith. After Sheen's victory, Berle quipped, "he has better writers than me !". The Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, had their fifteen minute, weekly devotional talk on radio and television each week, The Sacred Heart Program", and the Paulist Fathers, whose ministry is primarly focused on faith communications offered their thirty minute , "Insight" program featuring Catholic actors in short stories imparting moral values. Then for awhile we fell away from the broadcast media, until re-establishing Catholic television and radio in the latter portion of the twentieth century. Now today with cable, satellite, and internet communications flourishing, we need to develop more programming to reach more people. That is why the Catholic Communications Campaign is so vital to the effective work we do as today's and tomorrow's evangelists for Christ..........With Faith In The Power Of God's Word To Truly Connect And Transform The World, Fr. Troy