Consumer Protection
By Peter Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 26, 2010
When you have been around non-profits for as long as I have (my whole life) you learn that there is no such thing as a shameless plug. You don’t lose an opportunity to promote your good work (or the need to get more money to do more good work).
That brings me to Trinity Communications and its current work: the CatholicCulture.org website.
Shameless Plug #1: CatholicCulture.org is one of the most visited faithful Catholic websites on the Internet. In the last quarter of 2009, the website received an average of approximately 197,000 unique visitors per month. (Source: Google Analytics). This means that during each month nearly 200,000 web users were exposed to sound Catholic influence thanks to our website.
Shameless Plug #2: During that same time period, visits came from English speaking users in 215 countries/territories. The majority came from the United States, Canada, the U.K., Ireland, and Australia. However, visitors also came from such places as China, Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, India, the Philippines, etc. CatholicCulture.org is a vessel of truth to people in nearly all places of the world.
Shameless Plug #3: Trinity Communications has been a leader in advancing faithful Catholic material and commentary online since 1993 (before the Internet). In creating such entities as the Catholic Resource Network (which became EWTN Online) and PetersNet.net (which became CatholicCulture.org), Trinity Communications helped to create the gold standard for how Catholic websites should operate. Years ago, in creating the first credible online web presences for such organizations as the Knights of Columbus, Trinity lent its judgment and expertise to other like-minded organizations in need of its assistance.
I could go on, but I’d never get to the central point, which is this:
Trinity Communications has been instrumental in shaping the web response to misinformation regarding the teachings of the Catholic Church. It reaches out into the marketplace and strives to protect “consumers” against “useless, inferior, or dangerous products, or misleading advertising” (Random House Dictionary).
In a very real sense, CatholicCulture.org is a consumer protection agency. All over the world, information consumers receive incorrect (if not deliberately misleading) information about the Faith from the media, family/friends/associates, leaders of other faiths, and (sadly) from some Catholic clergy.
When people think of CatholicCulture.org, I hope they think of the role that we play in educating and informing Catholics. But more often, we’re probably not “preaching to the choir”. What about the Methodist who decided to keep an open mind and take a peek at what we had to say? What about the Buddhist who read an article and took the time to argue with us about Catholic doctrine? What about the Baptist who we helped to understand Mary for the first time? What about...?
Today, Trinity Communications is proud to have led the way, and rejoices that CatholicCulture.org is only one stable, faithful Catholic voice among many on the Internet. But throughout the past 14 years we’ve provided consistent, faithful, independent Catholic news and commentary online. We continue to be one of the leaders, and continue to look for ways to be more impactful in providing ALL users of the Internet with reliable Catholic information.
CatholicCulture.org: The international organization for the protection of consumers of Catholic information.
Peter Mirus is a business, marketing, and technology consultant with more than 20 years of experience working with companies and nonprofits, ranging from start-ups to large international organizations. From 2004-2014 he contributed articles on the Catholic Faith, culture, and business to the CatholicCulture.org website.
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