What's Bringing So Many Catholics Home?

A ZENIT DAILY DISPATCH

What's Bringing So Many Catholics Home?

Part 1Interview With Campaign Founder Tom Peterson

By Andrea Kirk Assaf

ROME, 4 MAY 2010 (ZENIT)
It began with a single conversion, a moment in which a soul opened itself to the mercy and grace of God. From there, the Holy Spirit, working through that soul and its particular God-given talents, has multiplied and ricocheted this message of conversion around the world through an apostolate in the New Evangelization, bringing hundreds of thousands of fallen-away Catholics, and even non-Catholics, home to Rome.

The soul in question is that of Tom Peterson, an American former advertising executive, who has put his expertise and experience at the service of the Church through the creation of the Catholics Come Home ad campaign and Web site.

ZENIT spoke about the past, present and future of the campaign with the founder and president during his recent visit to Rome to address a conference on “Church Communications: Identity and Dialogue” at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.

Part 2 of this interview will be published Tuesday.

ZENIT: How did the Holy Spirit inspire you to begin this apostolate?

Peterson: I went on a retreat 13 years ago that changed my life, and in front of the Eucharist I got to know the God of the universe. I had known him before but, through the distraction of the secular world, I started focusing on business and acquiring more stuff. Through God’s mercy and grace he invited me on this retreat, I said yes and my whole life changed.

So I had a profound experience in front of the Eucharist, like a Saul to Paul conversion. I had never missed Mass before that, but I didn’t pay much attention, I would think about work, maybe what was for lunch, I’d race out of the parking lot, and very much lived in the grey area, a secular world Monday through Saturday, and then go to church for an hour on Sunday.

I was living a very lukewarm life. And as I grew in my faith, I realized how much more I had to learn.

ZENIT: Was there a slow process of change after that or did things begin to happen rapidly?

Peterson: Obviously the Good Shepherd is always looking for us, he is always leading us, so things happened both before the retreat and after. But things started speeding up after the retreat, when I said “OK Lord, I want to do your will, what do you want from me?” The first desire was to get close to the sacraments, with frequent confession, frequent Eucharist, start reading the Bible. I started going to daily Mass, and I begged God to serve. A few months later I had two dreams: one was about a little baby who was being put in a suitcase and smothered by a pillow, and I kept removing the arm holding the pillow and blessing the baby with the sign of the cross; in the second dream I was producing some sort of Catholic evangelization ad. Both dreams actually became true: Virtue Media, our pro-life apostolate, was born after that evening, and God called me into this, to protect babies and families for the sanctity of life by producing television commercials that air nationwide and in many cases worldwide, which help pregnant girls and post-abortive families and teach about the sanctity of life. It is called virtuemedia.org.

The second dream was fulfilled when the Diocese of Phoenix called me back in 1997, and they said “the Holy Father Pope John Paul II, for the New Evangelization, would like to invite inactive Catholics back home to the Church for the Jubilee, would you help us?” I said of course, that’s the fulfillment of my dream, and that is the calling I had on my retreat, to use the talents that God had given me, not for my own benefit but for the Church.

So I said yes, of course, and we did a very simplistic version of Catholics Come Home back in 1997. We aired it for 2.5 weeks in the Diocese of Phoenix, and miraculously 3,000 people came back to the Church. I figured out how much we had invested and said, “Hey, it is only $10 a soul. This is an incredible return and investment.” That was a one-time program and years later now we resurrected it, and created it as a full time lay apostolate, faithful to the magisterium of the Church. We’ve got excellent boards of advisors, we’ve got many clergy, we’ve got business advisors, we have lay theologians, noted Catholic authors, speakers who give us advice and make sure that our commercials have sound teachings.

So we aired the commercials again, under the new form where there are film commercials like “Epic” showing the universality of the Church all over the world, commercials like “Movie” that call folks to a deeper relationship with Jesus and talk about his divine mercy, testimonial ads of people who have left the Church for various reasons and have come home, and now miraculously the results are even more grace-filled. We’ve aired in 12 archdioceses and dioceses around the United States — Chicago, Seattle, back in Phoenix again — and while we are still working with the dioceses to calculate final statistics, it appears that as many as 200,000 people have come back to the faith or converted, which is a huge blessing, and the average diocese, based on the initial statistics, has grown as much as 11%.

ZENIT: You collect all the statistics on returning or new Catholics influenced by the ads through the dioceses?

Peterson: The dioceses do it, and sometimes they employ statisticians to make sure all their analysis is correct. They look at the census data, usually from October Mass counts, and they compare it with the post Catholics Come Home initiative Mass counts, then they look at the difference, after factoring out anything that may affect the numbers. So in Phoenix it was a 12% increase; in Corpus Christi, 17.5% in Spanish and in English. So far the average appears to be about 11% percent around the United States, and as many as 200,000 people. Amazingly, we are getting testimonials from around the country showing that not only are inactive Catholics coming back to the faith, but as a surprise to us, non-Catholics, Protestants and so forth, are converting to the faith after seeing the ads, going on the Web site, and being touched by the Holy Spirit. A young man named Harrison was enrolled in a Protestant university, but he just did not feel he was deep enough in his faith, when he came upon the Catholics Come Home Web site and said “This is exactly what I have been looking for.” A year later he converted to Catholicism, and now he is enrolled in Ave Maria Catholic University in Florida.

Another amazing story was from a man named Adrian from Colorado. He was born Catholic but not raised in the faith. He left his faith and became an atheist, his wife and children were atheists too. When he came across the Catholics Come Home Web site he saw the “Epic” ad that shows the history, beauty, spirituality and accomplishments of the Church and it made sense to him. When he heard the line “We are Catholic, welcome home," he said “I felt like the Holy Spirit touched me, I had to know more." A year later he came home to the Catholic Church with his wife and children and they were received this Easter 2010. He said, “I used to talk people out of the Church, now I am teaching people about the Catholic faith and bringing them back to the Church.”

ZENIT: How does an atheist know where to look for Catholics Come Home?

Peterson: We tried to find out because we have aired in Colorado but we don’t think we aired in his particular community, so obviously through the work of the Holy Spirit while he was surfing the Internet or while he was at a restaurant when the commercial came on TV. We have yet to find out how exactly he stumbled upon it, maybe he Googled a key word that brought up our site. We are not really sure, but obviously it was a work of the Holy Spirit and not a direct work of ours, because he found us as opposed to us advertising the message to him.

ZENIT: Do you air on secular television as well?

Peterson: All the time, in fact most times that is where we air. Our statistics are showing that as many as a million people from 80 different foreign countries have seen the ads through the Web site, some in the Middle East. Usually we expect people from Italy or Ireland to find us because at least they are known to be Catholic countries, but when people from Qatar or other not traditionally Catholic countries find us, it seems miraculous. So that is how the Internet works, as a viral message going out into the world where a friend or family member may have seen or heard about something in an e-mail and they perhaps spread it that way, or through various Internet search engines, or through Facebook, social media, or blogs, people stumble upon us.

But the vast majority of people who hear this message of hope and redemption in Jesus’ love for them see it on secular television. We normally air the ads for six weeks in a given diocese, very heavily so the average person will see the ads two or three times a day; we have about 25 different ads, various testimonials, we have the “Movie” ad, we have “Epic” in different lengths and different languages. Typically, in either late Advent leading to the New Year or in Lent we air these ads heavily in the given diocese. Ninety-eight percent of the people in the television area see the ads two or three times a day and by the time the campaign is over there is a lot of buzz about it in the secular media, there are a lot of discussions going on in beauty parlors and bars, at work places, everyone has pretty much seen the ads and are talking about them. Protestants, Catholics, former Catholics, Muslims, Jewish people, secular media … it opens positive dialogue.

Amazingly our focus groups and dial tests before we aired the ads, showed that people often came into the survey group having a negative impression about Catholicism or the Catholic Church, whether they were Protestants, former Catholic, even practicing Catholics, and people with no faith … but after they saw the commercials one time, 76% of the people surveyed in the focus groups said: “I think it is a very positive message, I like it very much." There were strong approval ratings, and the Hollywood firm that specializes in testing for movie trailers and product introductions told us “You’ve got a hit, you’ve got the tiger by the tail, so launch it." We asked another follow up question, which is probably more important: Now that you’ve seen these ads, would you consider coming back to the Church? — if they were fallen away Catholics; and if they were non-Catholics, Protestants, or perhaps agnostics: Would you consider looking into the Catholic faith? Miraculously 53% of both groups said, yes, I’d consider it.

So what we are learning is that communicating in a professional manner, using our God-given gifts, and our first fruits, much in the same way secular advertisers put out a message, we can do God’s work of the New Evangelization that Pope John Paul II so eloquently spoke about. He calls us laity through the encyclical "Christi Fidelis Laici" to live and serve the Church in our lay occupations. When we combine knowledge and experience and the talents God gave us in the secular world with faith and prayer and guidance by the Holy Spirit, miraculous fruits are born, like this apostolate and its results.
 

Part 2Interview With Campaign Founder Tom Peterson

By Andrea Kirk Assaf

ROME, 5 MAY 2010 (ZENIT)

When God chooses a methodology to bring fallen away Catholics back to the Church, he can certainly choose to spread the success from one country to another.

That seems to be his plan with a campaign started by Tom Peterson, an American former advertising executive, who has put his expertise and experience at the service of the Church through the creation of the Catholics Come Home ad campaign and Web site.

ZENIT spoke about the future of the campaign with the founder and president during his recent visit to Rome to address a conference on “Church Communications: Identity and Dialogue” at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.

Part 1 of this interview was published Monday.

ZENIT: What kind of good fruit has been born from this particular trip to Rome, during which you’ve been inundated by interview requests and have been networking with so many international Church communicators? Do you feel that now perhaps your initiative has taken on a new role of showing in a very simple and emotional way the positive face of the Church in the midst of all the negative connotations and publicity out there today?

Peterson: Holy Scripture, in the words of Jesus, is called the “Good News." In our faith journey, our loving Father in heaven, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit have given us good news. But the secular world wants to tell us a different story, the evil one wants to get us depressed, he wants us to focus on negativity, he wants us to not see the light at the end of the tunnel, to live in darkness. What I think I’ve learned on this trip is that there is much good news to share, and while the secular press, the media, and the evil forces of our world want to bring us down by focusing on people who are not living Christ-like lives, we, as the body of Christ, as baptized Catholics, must share the good news with the world. When we do, miracles happen, and hearts change.

There is a saying, “The longest distance in the world is the 18 inches between somebody’s mind and somebody’s heart." When I came to this conference I was a bit humbled because there were professors from all over the world presenting — brilliant minds of academia. I felt led to come here with a message that is very simple: “God loves you." And to communicate that, there are creative ways in which we can touch people in the general public with that very simple message. We should imitate Jesus who went out of the temple to go where the people are. And where are they? They are watching television, using the Internet; through the modern means of mass communication, we can bring this gospel, this good news of Jesus to a world that is in need of hope and healing. When we do, we see great fruit!

Amazingly, people have approached me from countries like Spain and Germany and others around the world and have said: We would love this in our community, would you bring this to our country? And I am very blessed and humbled by the fact they would like to see this in their native languages, in Portuguese, in Spanish, in French, Italian, and so forth, and we would love to serve their needs. Obviously we have a small staff, and a limited amount of ability, but God will provide if it is his will for us to expand, and what we have learned in the United States is a great template for us to now modify culturally so it falls on more fertile soil, record the voiceovers in the native tongues, in the native language of that community, replace some of our scenes that are more U.S. specific, and replace them with things that are more appealing to each country.

For example, the good folks in Australia would want us to show St. Mary MacKillop, their new patron saint, and the image of Pope John Paul II holding a koala bear etc… images that Australians would embrace and say “That’s my Church family. So there are scenes we can modify, so the message falls on more fertile soil in various local communities.

ZENIT: What is the future of Catholics Come Home?

Peterson: We have just updated our Web site as of December, so that it’s more interactive, more sincere. We have utilized web 2.0 technology, made the navigation more friendly, we have more teachings on the key moral and social issues of our day that people are looking for, such as information on infertility, contraception teachings, teachings on abortion and life, teachings on marriage and family, on annulments. As a result of the Web site enhancements in December, our traffic has gone up, so people are spending now as much as six minutes or more on the site, viewing more than four pages, so it is about triple of what it was the month before.

What we are doing is taking the same strategy and same technology of catholicscomehome.org and we are going to do the same with www.catolicosregresen.org, so that everything we have in Spanish and its different dialects is more appropriate for each country. As an example, in the United States in our “Epic” ad we have taken out a few scenes and put in an Ash Wednesday scene and a scene of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Spanish-language testimonials talk about how Our Lady is constantly calling us home to her Son. They use terms like “familia” in the voice over in the testimonials. One Hispanic gentleman talks about how he was with a professional baseball team and they work on Sunday, and how he used that as his excuse to miss Mass.

Our commercials in English, Spanish, and Polish aired in Chicago — our Polish language “Epic” ad also aired on PolSat in Chicago with the blessing of Cardinal George in the Archdiocese of Chicago. We learned that millions of people in Poland saw the Catholics Come Home ads in Polish during Advent and the Christmas holidays, since the PolSat signal was transmitted to Poland via satellite. One of my friends who is Polish and from my parish was visiting family in Poland and saw these ads on secular television there. So the Holy Spirit took us international before we even planned on it! This was a side benefit, it was a gift from God.

ZENIT: What have you learned from embarking on this holy adventure?

Peterson: The main thing I have learned is that there is this beautiful hidden world out there that exists. As Catholics we are given the gifts of the Holy Spirit through the holy sacraments of baptism and confirmation, we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, but too often the secular world lures us away. God has a purpose and a plan for all our lives. We have a unique function in the body of Christ. When we say “yes” to God and in doing his will in leading a sacramental life, the scales fall from our eyes, much like they did with St. Paul, and this new hidden world comes to life. It is full of color and adventure and peace and joy. What we have been missing by leading lives as “part-time” Catholics becomes very apparent to us — we can now see why others have joy. If we just take a step toward God and turn to him like the prodigal son, the loving Father-God comes running to us, and showers us with his graces.

So I encourage everybody to say “yes” to God, to partake of the wonderful sacrament of reconciliation, to start reading the Bible, to beg God to allow us closer to him. God will honor that prayer, and you will have an adventure, you will have a purpose and a calling in life, and discover a new world of hope and peace with Jesus.

On the Net:
Catholics Come Home: catholicscomehome.org
 

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