CatholicCulture.org redesigned: Why?

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Oct 06, 2009

Unless you’re getting this in an RSS feed, I suppose the redesign of CatholicCulture.org is obvious. But perhaps the reasons for it are not. Yet if the redesign is successful, the reasons should become obvious as you explore our new web site.

As you look around, consider the following:

• In recent years we’ve been transforming CatholicCulture.org gradually from a universal repository of outstanding Catholic materials to a medium with a more specific message: The need to engage the culture and to transform it in Christ.
• The most noteworthy major changes along this path, in chronological order, have been: First, the development of our extensive liturgical year system; second, the incorporation of the Catholic World News service; and third, the increased commentary on the Church and the world by Phil Lawler, Diogenes, our guests and myself.
• In the recent economic downturn, it became obvious that if we wished to continue to serve our users, we were going to have to become more financially efficient.

Conclusion? Complete our evolution by sharpening our mission.

We at CatholicCulture.org want to bring the Catholic Faith and the mind of the Church actively to bear on every facet of human life. This is the mission to form an authentic Catholic culture, a culture in which all human goods—both natural and supernatural—can flourish.

The major repositories of Catholic information that we’ve developed over the past seventeen years—our library, our reviews of other Catholic resources on the web, the collection of the Fathers of the Church, the online Catholic Catechism, the Catholic Dictionary, and special collections such as the works of Fr. William Most and our What You Need to Know series—all of these are still available in a single Resource Center, providing additional information on nearly any issue we discuss. These resources will grow more slowly now, which will substantially reduce our costs. But precisely because they are already so fully-developed, slower growth here is a good choice.

Meanwhile, our emphasis on contemporary news, our commentary on the strengths and weaknesses we find in the Church and the world, our analysis of complex Catholic issues, and our reflections on Catholic thought and spirituality are all brought to the fore in this new design. These are fresh, new and incisive materials written each day by some of the most remarkable Catholic cultural commentators in the English-speaking world today.

At the same time, amid all this heady analysis, we never want to forget the need to let Catholicism seep into our very bones. Hence the pivotal position of our extensive liturgical year materials, which can help all of us live the rhythms of the Church’s spiritual life, recapitulating the history of our salvation each and every year.

From the domestic Church to the halls of power to the Church’s own ministry: Wherever our users are and whomever they influence, the new site is designed to make of each one a better Catholic, and to form for all of us a Catholic culture.