media

Elizabeth Westhoff, the Archdiocese of St. Louis' Director of Marketing, wrote an excellent article summarizing the many ways she and others in St. Louis are using iPhones and a shoestring budget to promote the faith through video, pictures, social media, etc.

I love this section:

The production of each of these videos is something unseen in most other archdioceses across the country and for those of us who have been involved in their production; it has been a complete labor of love with an understanding that it is yet another way of getting out the messages of Christ.

One of the most amazing things we have been able to do is to use our iPhones as recording equipment.

When one or two of us go out on these “simple” video shoots, I’m always afraid the people on the other side of the “camera” are thinking we’re not prepared, or professionals, or something else along those lines. We show up with a tripod, lights from Home Depot, a battery-operated microphone, an iPhone and nothing else. We have everything we need, really.

The most important part of any creative endeavor is creativity, something which is not lacking in St. Louis! Using an iPhone as a substitute for a professional video camera or audio capture device is not only possible—it's happening every day! The most popular article I've ever written on this site is my guide to external microphones and input adapters for audio recording on the iPhone and iPad.

Use the tools you have to make the best media you can. And heck, the tiny camera and headset jack on my iPhone 4s provides a better picture and cleaner sound than even the most expensive shoulder video camera from ten years ago!

Read the article: e-Vangelization in the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

(This article was cross-posted with Open Source Catholic.)

Judging by the trailers for this movie, I think it will probably be a pretty thrilling and interesting movie that handles Catholic faith and morality well. The production value looks to be a bit higher than some other recent Catholic/Christian films, and I'm excited to see some top-notch actors and actresses in the credits, including Andy Garcia, Eva Longoria and Eduardo Verástegui.

The movie will be released June 1st, 2012 (just a short time from now). Here's the trailer:

Found: An interesting article from Gladden J. Pappin on Liberty, Technology, and the Advent of Social Networking. It's a bit tl;dr, but I've read through once, and hope to sit with it a little longer sometime.

The article (and many like it) makes me think a bit about the theme of personhood on the Internet, and how our use and overuse of social media, blogging, etc. in building our own self-image is something about which we must always be cautious.

I recently watched the Star Trek TNG Episodes 'Booby Trap' and 'Galaxy's Child', and while I'm no supporter of the strange philosophies that guide Star Trek morality/ethics, I wonder if we are becoming like Geordi LaForge, who fell in love with a projected image of a person on the holodeck.

One of the keys to using social media effectively is to keep a proper separation between one's true self-image and the image one projects on the 'holodeck' of the Internet (and make sure you know that others are not defined by tweets and avatars).

I didn't have much time today to post this earlier (I was driving home from a trip which took me through five states in six days, and had to do this on the road), but this afternoon I was on the excellent 'Catholics Next Door' radio show on the Sirius XM Catholic Channel.

I was happy to speak with Greg and Jennifer Willits about flockNote, about parish communications, and about helping Catholic organizations get connected to their flock in various ways.

Then I continued driving home from Chicago :)

I don't know if they have an online archive of their shows, but if I can find a link to the audio at some point, I'll try to provide it. I'm also not too familiar with satellite radio, since I've never subscribed (Pandora + free radio has worked for my musical tastes), so I don't know if there are any rebroadcasts or ways of listening to past shows...

...this is a question posed by KMOX Radio's Mark Reardon, who hosted an hour of some of the most confusing arguments for the Pope's resignation I've ever heard.

His basic principle was this: Accepting the facts of the New York Times' recent article bashing the Pope, should the Pope resign, as would any other head of an organization accused with being an accessory to a crime?

Unfortunately for Mark, most Catholics do not (and likely will not ever) accept the Times as a credible source of information when it comes to Catholic-bashing. There have been numerous posts on the problems in the NYT piece (some are linked to at the bottom of this post), but Mark would not for a moment entertain these problems, or any other arguments against the basis of his question.

Rather, he blamed a couple people for being insensitive to the victims of these crimes. Mark: nobody is arguing that the crimes should be shuffled under the rug or covered up. Rather, people are arguing that, in the specific instance of the NYT piece (and in most media reporting of the issue, by and large), there are serious flaws and inaccuracies that cause most rational people to discount the entire article!

Anyways, here's some good reading on the issue:

• To Whom Shall We Go? (article by Archbishop Timothy Dolan)
• Clocking the Times (article quoted by Whispers in the Loggia, dealing specifically with the U.S. case mentioned in the Times' article)
• Pastoral Letter of Pope Benedict XVI to those in Ireland (straight from the Pope!)
• "A Well-Oiled Campaign Against the Pope" (mentions some important info from different sources)