Greater use of audio? Now 3 tests. Feedback requested.

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Dec 07, 2018

I’ve been thinking about ways to make a more personal connection with those who use our website. One way to make that connection is to use the human voice in some of the resources we provide. I’ve been experimenting just a little with the creation of audio material.

At the same time, I have become concerned that the worldwide condition of the Church is so discouraging right now that it might be a good thing to use “human voice audio” as a way to encourage and even inspire.

We do plenty of teaching and critical analysis in our existing news and commentary, and in the material in our library. Some episodes of The Catholic Culture Podcast—which is currently our only significant use of the audio format—are certainly inspiring, but the podcast is designed for those who wish to spend a good deal of time listening. Our liturgical year material, of course, is as inspiring as the Catholic saints can make it. But on the whole, CatholicCulture.org has not been focused on inspiring as much as instilling confidence.

We definitely place at the center of our mission the effort to help committed Catholics understand what is going on in the Church, so that they can live their faith more confidently. That is encouraging, too, we believe. But attempting to be more positively inspirational is a little different.

One of a great many things that can be done with short audio clips is to highlight legitimate positive developments that might otherwise go unnoticed. In the few experiments I’ve done along these lines, I have tried also to draw a connection between a positive development and something we learn from the particulars of the liturgical day on which any given audio is recorded.

In practice, I’ve found two to five minutes to be a sufficient length for what I have just described, but our staff could do a great many different things with the audio medium and with links which are related to the topics covered. Inspiration is hardly the only Catholic need. Otherwise, we would not be doing what we do. But sometimes, when you are very busy and you need also to stay abreast of the Church’s troubles, it is valuable to be able to grab inspiration in manageable doses!

As a proof of one particular concept, then, I’ve actually polished up two tests I did in November, and I added a third in early December. I have very little experience with fine audio presentation (and what little experience I have comes from some apologetics videos I made on VHS cassettes back in the late 1980s). This is obviously a work in progress, but I am ready for feedback on the idea.

Below I present links to the first three tests out of the gate. I would appreciate it very much if those who are interested in audio material could listen to them, and then give me feedback about what they liked, what they didn’t like, and what kinds of things they would like us to consider developing for the future.

You can always email me at [email protected]. So here we go:

• St. Josephat and Bishop Conley’s Eucharistic Procession in Lincoln, Nebraska (November 12, 2018)
• St. Mechtild and the New Consciousness Guidelines of the American Academy of Neurology (November 19, 2018)
• Fr. Mario Guevara and Sulfuric Acid (December 7, 2018)

Thanks!