“The new evangelization, as we have heard, needs to be ardent and expressive,” said Rev. Alexander Castillo, who serves as director of Faith Formation and Evangelization for the Diocese of Oakland.
“Pope Francis calls us to own the process of the new evangelization. He makes it very clear we need to meet people where they are,” Father Castillo says.
And where are the people?
“Our people spend a lot of time on the Internet and on their phone,” Father Castillo said.
To meet the people where they are, the Department of Faith Formation and Evangelization is promoting the use of Formed, an online Catholic platform.
Formed offers Catholic content in both English and Spanish for formation, enrichment and entertainment for Catholics, including families, ministry leaders, catechists and parishes. It is a joint venture of the Augustine Institute, Lighthouse Catholic Media, Ignatius Press and others.
“It is unlike anything we have seen on the digital horizon and it is authentically Catholic,” said Patti Collyer, diocesan coordinator of faith formation for children and youth.
Formed is already in use in a dozen parishes in the diocese, including St. Anthony in Oakley, St. Margaret Mary in Oakland and St. Edward in Newark, where Clare Beltran, director of religious education, will also help to familiarize new users not only with Formed’s content, but its possibilities.
Parish leaders, as well as leaders within groups within parishes, such as Bible study, are invited to learn about Formed on May 16. A workshop will be presented in English from 10 a.m. to noon at St. Mary Parish in Walnut Creek. That evening, from 7 to 9 p.m., at St. Lawrence O’Toole Parish in Oakland, workshops will be presented in English and in Spanish.
Formed will be available for purchase by parishes at a discounted rate during May. The yearly cost for a parish is about $1,600; parishes with fewer than 300 families would pay about half that. The 12 parishes using Formed average more than 160 parishioners signed on to the program. Formed can be accessed on phones, tablets and computers.
Formed is great, Beltran said, for family movie nights, with a selection of family-friendly movies. “Formed has a lot of great saint movies,” she said. “It’s a great way to introduce our kids to saints.”
People need solid sources of information, Father Castillo said. An individual might use it to read a book; a catechist might look for ways to illustrate a lesson; a pastor could use it for information for a talk.
“It’s valuable for everybody,” he said.
Full story at Catholic Voice Oakland.
FORMED.org is hugely overrated and hyped. If dioceses and parishes think that FORMED is going to solve the Church’s problems regarding lousy worship and banal catechesis, they are wrong. It’s sad that so many Church organizations are trying to develop a technological fix to a spiritual problem. I know one parish whose adult “faith formation” consists entirely of scheduling FORMED video watching sessions in parish classrooms. How boring. How lazy. If FORMED relied on individual subscriptions instead of duping parishes and dioceses into buying expensive group subscriptions, the platform would become insolvent.
It is probably useful as a supplemental, but nothing can take the place of PREACHING and the SACRAMENTS — and those do not cost $1600!
$1600 is a steal compared to paying $50,000 for a quality DRE at a parish.
FORMED does not replace a DRE.
An individual subscription to it costs $10 per month. If your parish pays for a group membership, you can get free access to it.
There actually are things that would help “lousy worship” and “banal catechesis”.
It is just a subscription to a resource with Catholic videos, audios and e-books.
It does not replace preaching the Sacraments and it is not trying to.
There are resources that you could use to help a person return to the Sacraments or the Church.
So, Gerri, what is your solution? How would you improve the program? How would you suggest the diocese should approach faith formation? I’m not sure what lousy worship is. Can you explain? What is banal “catechesis?” Its hard to find effective ways to evangelize to generations of people who don’t go to church or believe in God. I would think that encouraging new methods would be appropriate. If one way doesn’t work, lets try something else. If that doesn’t work, try another method and so on. But keep trying.
I’ll chime in: lousy worship is with guitars, drums, P&W songs and out-of-tune singers. It has a priest who thinks he’s a talk show host or comedian instead of a leader of worship. Bad catechesis is entertainment driven and light on the substance of Catholic truth. It tries to make people feel good instead of informing them.
At least that’s what I think, and it’s what I see in too many parishes.
Yes, by all means, keep trying because what we’re doing now isn’t working well at all. The Church has never had so many paid liturgical, musical and catechetical staff members at the diocesan and parish levels in its history, and the results across the board are poor. If the Church were Starbucks or Walmart there would be heads rolling…
Here is some of the content:
Symbolon (which launched the program host by Dr. Edward Sri) has 20 episodes
Beloved (a series on the Sacarment of Holy Matrimony) has 12 episodes
Reborn (a series on Baptism) has 3 episodes plus 3 bonus lectures in the parish edition
Divine Mercy: The Second Greatest Story Ever Told (a 10 episode series on the God’s – Mercy for us, hosted by Fr Michael Gaitley, MIC) will launch this Sunday, on Divine Mercy Sunday.
Lectio: Peter is a 10 episode “Bible Study” series, hosted by Dr Tim Gray, focusing on a hdate
Bibical and Historical role St Peter played in Salvation History
Lectio: Eucharist is a 10 episode “Bible Study” from Genius to Revelation focused on the foreshadowing and explicit mentioning of the Eucharist, hosted by Dr Brant Pitre Lectio: Prayer is a 10 episode study on Lectio Divina, using scripture as prayer, hosted by Dr Tim Gray
Footprints of God – a multi episode series hosted by Steve Ray
Catholicism – the landmark 10 episode series hosted by Bishop Robert Barron (then Father Barron)
movies like Mary of Nazareth, St Rita, etc
two programs from the Courage Apostolate
two programs with Fr Robert Spitizer
YDisciple – a multi series, multi episode program designed for Teens, includes the Called Series for vocations, confirmation videos, theology of the body, etc
33 Days to Morning Glory, by Fr Michael Gaitley MIC, videos and eBooks
Consoling the Heart of Jesus, by Fr Michael Gaitley MIC, videos and eBooks
The ‘One Thing’ Is Three; by Fr Michael Gaitley MIC; videos and eBooks
The Bible and the Virgin Mary, 12 episode series based on Dr Scott Hahn’s book Hail Holy Queen.
Opening the Word – the 156 episode series on all the Sunday readings at Mass
Plus future programs are in the works, including
– Forgiven (a series on Confession)
– Lectio: Evangelization, and 10 episode Bible Study on the Acts of the Apostles, hosted by Dr Mary Healy.
– and a program that will eventually be based on the youth Catachsim
Bob One can always be counted to support something “new”. Bob One as a true believer in Vatican 2 have you even realized that in nearly every single category from baptism, to marriages, mass attendance etc etc. all of them are in the negative since the glorious Vatican 2 council. Yet your side doubles down on the same nonsense that got the Church into this mess ie Modernism. Here’s the real fix, PREACH THE TRUTH, as hard as it is, and if people leave then let them go. Thousands left Christ when they could not handle what he was saying, so we have been here before. Let the Church be purified and remember that the Church’s only job is getting souls to Heaven, Nothing Else
I agree that Formed is a lazy approach to faith formation. The company markets Formed as the “Catholic Netflix” but the catalogue of videos is overwhelmingly of such bad quality that after you watch Fr. Barron’s videos there isn’t much worth watching left. I also don’t understand the excitement about the website.
Formed stopped streaming Barron’s Catholicism video series last year. More accurately, Word on Fire (Barron’s online evangelization site) stopped offering the Catholicism video series to Formed. Wise move by Bishop Barron to make his Word on Fire competitor site more attractive. Like you said, the Catholicism series was just about the only good video offering in Formed’s catalogue. Now that that’s gone, there’s not much worth watching.
My parish subscribes to Formed and offers it to parishioners. I looked at it once but never went back. I also have a little more inside information than most parishioners about the service and user accounts.
People should know that usage is tracked. Parish staff have access to metrics provided by Formed that show how parishioners use it, how frequently, when, and so forth. Just like Facebook, when something is given to you for free you are the product. Wanna bet info about web habits is also recorded and a profile is made about you? Just like Facebook. The digital world is full of spies that record your activity.
I did not know that. That’s very interesting.
Who said anything about Formed “replacing” or taking over the sacraments, preaching, and catechesis in a parish? No one. The people at Formed have thought of a creative way to reach out to Catholic where they’re at. And some of the people commenting here just go about trashing it for no good reason. It’s a supplement, not a replacement. Some people would rather the Church return to the 1950’s. Sad.
Look what’s happened in catechesis over the past twenty years: prepackaged content programs have taken over. LifeTeen, Edge, One-Eight and so forth: they all have in common that they provide boxed instructions, activities, handouts to copy, prayers and video clips so that you don’t have to know anything to run the program. That’s the whole point: an idiot can do it. But the problem is that such prepackaged programs lack vitality if not run by a creative and knowledgeable catechist. LifeTeen youth ministry has a terrible retention rate once kids leave high school. Is Formed going to be used in the same way? I think that’s the criticism.
If this is evangelization, why charge money? Did Jesus? Will people pay 10 dollars out of their church donations? Does this christian neflix share or take away revenue from the church?