If the young punks at the LDS church can advertise on television, why can't the 2,000 year old church with all the neat vestments, rituals, incense and buildings and stuff do the same thing?
Well apparently they are! You can now find a 30 second version of the video above on major TV networks. I first saw a version of the ad above this week during 60 Minutes, slotted (I think) between an ad for elderly male virility and the new iPad. Talk about a see-saw of emotions- I went from dread for my future to guilt for the past to techno-elation in the space of 90 seconds!
As a lapsed Catholic, the ad is obviously targeting people like me, who, for whatever reason, have drifted from Holy Mother Church. I'm sure the ad is also intended to rehabilitate the Church's image in America, nearly a decade after multiple child sex & rape allegations rocked dioceses from Boston to Los Angeles.
I think the ad works great as a marketing tool for lapsed and non-Catholics alike. In America, there is a competitive marketplace for religious services. Like speaking in tongues? We invented that and continue to innovate in that space! Want serious, buttoned-up, Five Points Calivinist doctrine? Look up Reformed Presbyterian in your local yellow pages and prepare to hit the books. Are you chronically inept with your money and want God to help? Creflo Dollar or Rod Parsley can be found on those religious TV channels you don't really want but pay for anyway. Do you want an authentically American religion that promises you the position of Deity of your own planet and has its own Exodus story of the persecuted seeking the promised land in Utah? Then Mormonism is for you!
It's only fitting that the world's oldest Christian body (along with the Orthodox churches) jump into this marketplace and start aggressively selling itself. We have some cool features too, like infant baptism, incense, the whole Eucharist/transubstantiation thing and confession! Sure, many of the claims in the ad, like the unbroken chain of popes from Peter onto Benedict the XVI (ignoring the times when we had two popes, or a pope in France, or the Schisms with the East) and the idea that the Catholic Church invented the scientific method (even as it infamously persecuted Galileo for employing said method) are suspect, but then again who expects advertisements to deal in such nuance? Let people like my Calvinist friend Fred tear those claims apart.
A tiny part of me is proud to see the Church market itself in this way. After all, Catholics, until the mid 20th century, had a tough row to hoe in America. Derided as papists, hated on by the Ku Klux Klan, and questioned over loyalty, America for much of its history wasn't friendly to Catholics or the Irish and Italian immigrants who brought their faith here. It's about time we started thumping our chests: we are the largest religious group in America and, as the ad points out, we American Catholics have a shared culture with a billion other Catholics around the world. From the people who work in call centers in the Phillipines to the Latinos south of the border and professionals in South Korea, Catholics share a cultural identity as much as a religious one.
It's like Judaism in that way, and just like there are Secular Jews, I consider myself a Secular Catholic. So sorry CatholicsComeHome.org, I won't be returning to mass anytime soon but thanks for the reminder of the beauty and the warts of the Catholic Church.
CatholicsComeHome.org
News Article about the ad
Catholic church running ads in America
An embedded YouTube video appeared here in the original post. View the original — embeds are preserved as links in this archive.
Well apparently they are! You can now find a 30 second version of the video above on major TV networks. I first saw a version of the ad above this week during 60 Minutes, slotted (I think) between an ad for elderly male virility and the new iPad. Talk about a see-saw of emotions- I went from dread for my future to guilt for the past to techno-elation in the space of 90 seconds!
As a lapsed Catholic, the ad is obviously targeting people like me, who, for whatever reason, have drifted from Holy Mother Church. I'm sure the ad is also intended to rehabilitate the Church's image in America, nearly a decade after multiple child sex & rape allegations rocked dioceses from Boston to Los Angeles.
I think the ad works great as a marketing tool for lapsed and non-Catholics alike. In America, there is a competitive marketplace for religious services. Like speaking in tongues? We invented that and continue to innovate in that space! Want serious, buttoned-up, Five Points Calivinist doctrine? Look up Reformed Presbyterian in your local yellow pages and prepare to hit the books. Are you chronically inept with your money and want God to help? Creflo Dollar or Rod Parsley can be found on those religious TV channels you don't really want but pay for anyway. Do you want an authentically American religion that promises you the position of Deity of your own planet and has its own Exodus story of the persecuted seeking the promised land in Utah? Then Mormonism is for you!
It's only fitting that the world's oldest Christian body (along with the Orthodox churches) jump into this marketplace and start aggressively selling itself. We have some cool features too, like infant baptism, incense, the whole Eucharist/transubstantiation thing and confession! Sure, many of the claims in the ad, like the unbroken chain of popes from Peter onto Benedict the XVI (ignoring the times when we had two popes, or a pope in France, or the Schisms with the East) and the idea that the Catholic Church invented the scientific method (even as it infamously persecuted Galileo for employing said method) are suspect, but then again who expects advertisements to deal in such nuance? Let people like my Calvinist friend Fred tear those claims apart.
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Famous anti-Catholic editorial cartoon. The alligators
are papists seeking to devour good Christian American
children
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A tiny part of me is proud to see the Church market itself in this way. After all, Catholics, until the mid 20th century, had a tough row to hoe in America. Derided as papists, hated on by the Ku Klux Klan, and questioned over loyalty, America for much of its history wasn't friendly to Catholics or the Irish and Italian immigrants who brought their faith here. It's about time we started thumping our chests: we are the largest religious group in America and, as the ad points out, we American Catholics have a shared culture with a billion other Catholics around the world. From the people who work in call centers in the Phillipines to the Latinos south of the border and professionals in South Korea, Catholics share a cultural identity as much as a religious one.
It's like Judaism in that way, and just like there are Secular Jews, I consider myself a Secular Catholic. So sorry CatholicsComeHome.org, I won't be returning to mass anytime soon but thanks for the reminder of the beauty and the warts of the Catholic Church.
CatholicsComeHome.org
News Article about the ad