Let's Adore Jesus-Eucharist! | Home >> Lost Sermons >> Medbod
What is this "Medbod" thing?
Why not first seek the support of Cardinal Marc Ouellet?
Why bother reinventing "Catholiens"?
Please see the initial description of this project.
Mr. Jean Lortie answers (2005-June-22):
Having worked over 25 years at the diocesan level, I know just how difficult it is to get such a project approved, in an official way, by the Diocesan Authorities, before the project is implemented. [...]
On the other hand, nothing prevents Catholics to put forward such a project. Many people have a tendency to believe that large Church projects were started by well-established structures, but on the contrary, quite often, it was simple laypersons who had an intuition, which they put forth and, with God's grace, were able to make it grow. I'd even say it's the most common fate for the great majority of Church projects.
If I may give you advice... start the project, make it known to Catholic organizations, and quite soon this site could become an interesting reference point. Official blessings often come at harvest time.
Note to English-speaking readers: Catholiens is currently the largest directory of French-speaking Catholic sites.
S. Jetchick answers (2005-June-25):
I'm no expert on the Catholiens website. Also, if I'm wrong, please correct me. That being said, here is a list of things I find suboptimal about that web site:
1) Difficulty of contacting the "owners". It's not easy finding out
who owns this site (Francesco RUFFO?). Moreover, I tried at least twice
to contact them, and never got an answer.
2) Selection criteria. Where are the selection criteria? The site claims
it's a group decision (something which would be impossible, given the size
of the directory, and which anyway would be a Protestant approach).
3) Where is the Pope?. There is no apparent connection to the Holy See,
no profession of Faith, etc. If you search on the site, you find the note
that: "Thierry PLUQUET, Priest, is tasked by Monsignor
A.M. Léonard of the Namur Diocese (Belgium), to deal with the admission of
new sites". That's good, but why put this at "the back" of the site, rather
than up front? Why doesn't this person answer e-mails? What criteria does
this person use?
4) Use of the web site for commercial purposes. The "owners" of the
directory apparently use this site to indirectly advertise their company.
(On the home page, when you clic on "Who are we?", you end up on the home
page of a consulting firm. Same thing if you clic on "Webdesign: Francesco RUFFO").
5) Ad on the home page. Flashing banner advertisement for a CD by
Cécile and Jean-Noël Klinguer. I don't know these people, but it's at least
in bad taste to use a directory to give publicity to certain sites. Do all
the member sites agree to promote the products shown on this site?
6) Holy Water bottle openers. Of course, at some point of time you
need a comprehensive directory with everything related to Catholicism, even
vaguely related. But we'd like to be able to also select the "cream of the
crop", the best sites from the dogmatic and moral point of view.
7) Somewhat strange themes. Out of the 52 themes of the directory,
the following words do not appear: Apologetics (reasons to believe), Catechesis,
Dogma, Ethics, Morality, Polemics (rebuttals to attacks of other religions
against Catholicism, etc.), Philosophy, etc. In other words, the directory
seems to systematically avoid emphasizing what is necessary in our times, when
the Church is attacked on all sides.
8) Where is the Vatican web site? Shouldn't the official web site
of the Catholic Church be very obviously displayed?
9) The general "sanitized" atmosphere of the site. Of course, there is
nothing wrong with having a web site with no pornography, no crude language,
etc., on the contrary! But I'm using the word "sanitized" in another sense,
here. Whereas the Catholic Church has never before been so devoured from the
inside by heretics, and attacked from the outside by Secularism, the Catholiens
website seems to do away with all of that. Whereas we should be doing everything
we can to muster our forces and equip them to fight the enemy, the atmosphere
of the website seems to be: "Let's play some more Mozart, so the
passengers won't notice the ship is taking in a lot of water...".
Let's Adore Jesus-Eucharist! | Home >> Lost Sermons >> Medbod