New Catholic multi-media resource

A very useful and innovative new website has been launched called Catholic Media House to support everyone involved in catechesis, youth workers, and teachers, by providing multimedia resources.

The different types of media offered for download are inspirational and educational mini-movies, motion and still backgrounds, countdowns on various topics of all varieties and can be used in presentations "to re-evangelize the baptized, disciple and mobilize them for evangelization and to be a blessing".

Catholic Media House also provides a great platform for producers of media to have their resources in a central visible and easily accessible location.

The director of the project is Stephen Officer. A committed Protestant for 37 years, he became a Catholic three years ago.

Stephen said: "As a convinced Catholic, I love discussing the faith and was involved in a series of talks for our local Parish Faith Formation programme. Rather than torturing my audience with a plain text on plain background Powerpoint presentation read by myself, I sought ways to make it more dynamic and engaging.

"I sourced around for good Catholic video resources and quickly found that whilst there were a number of fine DVD/video productions there were few short presentations that I could insert into my own presentation, whereas I found a good number of evangelical/protestant mini-movies which also worked well with my presentation.

" After each one of my talks people would come up and talk about the presentation and were impressed with the visual aspect which showed a certain aspect of the faith. Then I realized the power of the audio/visual media for these types of presentations, done by a person but sprinkled with some appropriate short videos to explain a point further. Then the idea came to me, why not provide a resource where Catholics involved in teaching, RCIA, youth work etc can find dynamic resources to help their ministries can preview and download these into their own presentations.

"I signed up a number of independent producers who provide material for our site. By doing this the hope is that Catholic producers see the potential and demand and will start producing media for CMH where we provide a platform for them to expose their products to a greater audience."

Note from editor: While most of the material is American - much of it would work very well in other English speaking countries. In future, I hope they build up their catalogue to include work from elsewhere.

Catholic Media House can be found at www.catholicmediahouse.com