Are you trying to love a Catholic by sharing renewal and message resources with them? Here’s a website designed just for you. It’s loaded with lots of different ways you can show the best love and encouragement for a Catholic friend. As you know, many Catholics are very eager to step up their faith-walk if we’ll just walk alongside them. At this site, there are books, booklets, tracts, websites, online articles, audio, dvds, online videos, and more. Some of the resources are in Spanish.
As a former Catholic, I have to say that the name of the website and the webpage messaging is not very loving. Anyone wanting to really love a Catholic friend should probably *not* send this website to their friend. Starting a conversation with why they are wrong isn’t advised either.
That might be implied or assumed, but the content of the website seemed contrary to the nice write up.
Hi Danielle. Honestly, I was afraid it might come across that way. But we hoped the resources would be helpful. The person who assembled the site is a long-time friend. We know he means well. So we tried to help put our best foot forward in presenting the resources themselves. Please focus on any good that you can get from them but, yes, probably better not to steer a Catholic friend to a website with this name. Thanks for the good feedback. Please forgive any hurt. So sorry.
Apology accepted! I wasn’t personally offended. I do concur with John below though. I was surprised to see Brigada advocate this site.
I understand the owner of the site means well. I know some former Catholics have very strong feelings of the religion in which they were raised.
Danielle, thank you so much for understanding.
And I will say this: Upon realizing how the site would come across to Catholics, the last we heard from him last night, he was searching for better domain names to recast the shape and direction of the site. Brigada participants shared their concerns, he was listening, and to me, it was a great example of the people of God at work together. Thanks to those who were willing to take time to speak up. And thanks for grace that you imparted to Brigada in its responsibility to curate resources responsibly. We don’t take that grace for granted — and we’ll do our best to learn from it.
Amen :) Thanks Brigada!
I reach out to Catholics in Italy and I would concur that the name of the website is not suitable, it has a negative connotation.
Oh dear! This feels a bit like another version of “open mouth, insert foot”. I could not agree more with Andrew Diprose and Danielle that telling Catholics they are wrong is not the most helpful approach. I work in France among a largely nominal Catholic population. Even though they don’t really practice their faith, it’s still part of their cultural identity, and telling them “you’re wrong” is not going to win you any friends.
On the other hand I have found some Catholics in France who are eager to read the Bible and talk about their Bible reading. That’s a whole lot better than telling them “you’re wrong”.
I accept the apologies of the editor, but I expected better from Brigada.
Doug, did anyone actually look at the webpage? the name of the page and titles of every resource listed are negative, nothing like your headline of “Loving Catholics by Sharing Renewal Resources” As all the above say, this is not an appropriate way to reach out to Catholic people. You should consider an “OOPS” article in the next edition.
OK… praying for this right now… Contacting the original contributor of this item.