Catholic storytelling in the modern world

Catholic storytelling in the modern world

Easter Sunday, March 24, 1940, Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen took advantage of the new medium -television - appearing on the first Catholic television program in the world, “The Spiritual Symbolism of Television,” on a New York NBC station.

The priest had already offered homilies for 14 years via radio before standing in front of a television camera. Bishop Sheen’s “Life is Worth Living” weekly show hit the television airwaves in 1952 on 169 local stations and made the bishop a pioneer in Catholic communications and a household name. 

Another bishop is known as a Catholic communications pioneer for his work evangelizing to the “nones” by taking advantage of the reach that the internet and social media can provide. Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester is also a household name due to the huge success of his Word on Fire ministry.

Millions follow Word on Fire and Bishop Barron on the ministry’s website and social media platforms. He first used the internet in ministry when he shared his recorded radio homilies on a website. 

“It was a simple but powerful idea: spread the Good News of Jesus Christ through multiple media platforms, engaging people with the goodness, truth and beauty of Catholicism,” from the Word on Fire website.

The same message of the goodness, truth and beauty of Catholicism hasn’t changed throughout the history of the church. However, Catholic communicators learned to pivot and adjust the delivery of the message to meet the needs of the people.

In the medieval and Renaissance eras, the general population could not read. The church creatively used stained glass windows to teach Scripture and the beliefs of the church. 

Just one year after Bishop Sheen launched Life is Worth Living on television, Bishop Mueller moved the Diocese of Sioux City away from inclusion in the national Our Sunday Visitor and endorsed the creation of a weekly independent diocesan newspaper, The Globe. The Globe’s editorial board included the bishop, five monsignors and two priests. 

In an effort to reach “non-subscribers,” the diocese printed extra copies of the Globe, bound them and delivered them to parishes in time for the faithful to pick up at their Sunday Masses.

Numerous editors and reporters continued to tell the story of the Catholic faith in northwest Iowa through print over the years. The appearance and size of the newspaper changed with the trends. 

In the early 2000s, the newspaper moved the design work of The Globe in-house rather than farming composition out to an outside firm. This allowed more flexibility with layout and for more timely news in each edition.

In 2006 when the paper was renamed The Catholic Globe, the format was changed to a smaller, easier-to-handle tabloid rather than the larger, bulkier broadsheet newspaper. 

In 2009, several diocesan offices took advantage of the popularity of Facebook to create their own pages as a supplemental way to communicate quickly with certain segments of the public. Bishop Walker Nickless launched his Facebook “fan page” as it was called at that time. Other social media platforms were added in time.

Responding to the public’s thirst for accessing news digitally, The Catholic Globe added an e-edition option for subscribers in 2012. The e-edition was the electronic mirror of the printed newspaper and could be accessed on any computer.

To provide communications between printed editions as a supplement to subscribers and to reach non-subscribers, the free LumeNotes and Notas Lumen e-newsletters were launched as part of the Lumen Media/The Lumen rebranding in June 2020. 

Beginning July 2024, we will again pivot and adjust as we and our predecessors have done over the years to meet the needs of the people of the Diocese of Sioux City. 

We will be able to distribute the hard news as it happens without waiting two weeks or more for the next production date. We can put more of our resources towards content in a variety of formats and languages to better serve the diverse cultures and backgrounds of the members of the diocesan church. 

What won’t change is Lumen Media’s reporting on the faith-building efforts of our parishes and schools and breaking down contemporary issues through a Catholic lens from trusted sources. 

In short, we will continue our Catholic storytelling, adjusting for modern distribution. 

The next Lumen Message column will be posted at lumenmedia.org with a link from LumeNotes.