By Gina Christian, OSV News
Sharing the Gospel means “we must be present in digital spaces,” and an annual collection by the nation’s Catholic bishops aims to bolster those efforts, said the bishop spearheading the initiative.
But this year’s funding campaign comes as the Catholic Church in the U.S. faces political and cultural challenges that have intensified “the critical need for the Catholic press,” one expert told OSV News.
“When you give to the Catholic Communication Campaign, you shed light on the work of the Church and help the Church to shed the light of Christ on everyone,” said Bishop William D. Byrne of Springfield, Massachusetts, chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Communications.
The bishop shared his thoughts in a May 6 news release issued by the USCCB to announce this year’s collection, which takes place in many dioceses on the May 16-17 weekend.
Donations can also be made online anytime at igivecatholic.org/story/USCCB-CCC.
Each contribution is evenly split between local diocesan and national communications efforts.
Among the national-level initiatives the funds support are the USCCB’s posting of daily Mass readings, which include audio and video resources; livestreamed coverage of the bishops’ annual fall and spring assemblies, at which the Church’s mission priorities are discussed; and USCCB social media content, which “reaches hundreds of millions of users each year” to bring the bishops’ work “directly to Catholics and people of goodwill,” according to the USCCB release.
Collection proceeds also support the Rome bureau of Catholic News Service, the remaining division of the U.S. bishops’ long-running official news service. CNS Rome produces “in-depth coverage of Pope Leo XIV, his ministry and his travels,” said the release.
Also funded by the campaign are a series of roundtables on Catholics and mental health, with bishops and clinical experts discussing various issues on that topic. Videos of the talks can be accessed on the USCCB website.
The collection takes place as a combination of multiyear religious disaffiliation, shifting media distribution technologies, and reduced revenue streams have seen Catholic media outlets large and small shutter.
In 2006, U.S. Catholic newspapers numbered 196 with 6.5 million in circulation, according to figures from the Catholic Media Association, which serves Catholic journalists in the U.S. and Canada. In 2020, the number of newspapers had dropped 40%, to 118 with 3.8 million in circulation.
Those hurdles arrive just as the Church’s message, ministries and messengers –from Catholic Charities and other pro-life ministries to the U.S. bishops and Pope Leo himself – are coming under increasing attack in the public forum, including from misinformation fueled by artificial intelligence, making the mission of Catholic media all the more vital, said experts.
“In an era when AI-generated slop and poorly thought out hot takes are easy to find, Catholic media is well situated to offer something deeper: meaningful, authentic, truthful and engaging content from writers and creators across all platforms,” Kerry Weber, president of the Catholic Media Association and executive editor of America, the long-running Jesuit magazine, told OSV News.
Weber pointed to a 2023 report by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, noting that the data showed “about half of American Catholics read their diocesan newspaper or magazine.”
Even higher engagement rates are seen in the parish bulletin, a publication that typically uses a classic newspaper distribution strategy for maximum engagement, with volunteers handing the publication out directly to Mass attendees at church entrances.
CARA found 90% of weekly Mass attenders read their parish bulletin and 87% of monthly Mass attenders read it. Close to 21.2 million Catholic adults, or 40% of all Catholic adults in the U.S., attend Mass at least monthly, according to Pew Research.
“Local Catholic media still has a real opportunity to make an impact within a community and also some real opportunity for growth, especially if it has appropriate financial and institutional support,” said Weber, pointing to CARA’s data.
“The Church’s communications are crucial for our Catholic unity and for disseminating the Gospel message,” Metropolitan Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia told OSV News.
The archbishop has prioritized communications in his multiple leadership roles in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and as president of Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine.
“Our media bring to those in and outside the Church the beautiful, freeing, salvific words of Our Lord, his blessings and the witness of so many of his followers, which inspires us,” he said.
Greg Erlandson, longtime columnist and former director of Catholic News Service, told OSV News that “the critical need for the Catholic press” has “only gotten stronger.”
“We need to be able to look at what’s happening in the world and see it in the context of faith,” he explained. “And that’s the one thing that can’t be provided by secular news media.”
Erlandson highlighted in particular the need for diocesan news reporting, which provides “some place to come and see the events in their diocese, state, country and world, and to understand them from the point of view of faith.”
He cited as an example Catholic media coverage of Pope Leo’s recent apostolic visit to several nations in Africa. The journey took place as President Donald Trump fired repeated media broadsides at the pope over his opposition to the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, including making false statements that the pope supports Iran having a nuclear weapon.
Erlandson said while “secular media coverage” of the trip “primarily focused on what they interpreted as rebukes to President Trump” in the pope’s speeches during the trip, the task of “really finding out the details” and purpose of the trip lay with “the Catholic press.”
“I think that is really the ongoing mission of the Church,” said Erlandson, referring to the role of the Catholic press. “And it’s an evangelizing mission.”
Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. OSV News national news editor Peter Jesserer Smith contributed to this report.
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