Solutio Blog

If you're looking for a quick and easy way to make a big impact on the visitors to your site, then watch the video above!

I've often contemplated what it would be like to go to confession online... I could simply write an anonymous email to a priest, and he could respond with my absolution. Now that would be efficient. But then I quickly remember that every Sacrament has to have matter and form, and a lack of personal interaction would probably invalidate an online confession. But those are just the thoughts of someone who stares at computer screens for most of his day.

While confession is limited to a box, evangelization and ongoing catechesis do not have to be. In fact it is specifically in these two areas that we need to push the boundaries and be more innovative. Great ways to do that are finding pertinent Catholic blogs (try to find one that's updated more frequently than the one you're reading currently), informative and entertaining podcasts, and useful Catholic news sites/discussion forums. All of this will serve to enrich and strengthen your own online Catholic faith development.

But here's the trick, let's remember to not keep this good news to ourselves. Share your favorite links, podcasts, blogs, etc. on your Facebook page, Twitter account or Google+. Talk to your pastor about having a section of your parish website (or bulletin) that is dedicated to providing these types of resources to people. And most importantly, share these great tools for evangelization with our non-Catholic brothers and sisters.

By working together to spread the Word, we just might start claiming souls for Christ one mouse click at a time! (I should trademark that phrase)  If you have some good suggestions for blogs, podcasts, or news sites, then please share them in the comments section below.

I've worked for the church at the parish level as a youth minister and as a director of a diocesan program. Currently, I am a volunteer catechist at my local parish. With all of my years of involvement in parish life, a common theme that I frequently hear is: "We'd love to know what people think about this idea." There's a solution for that. The trick is creating a good platform to collect the data, and then implementing it.

Many parishes have involvement on Facebook (and now Google+), and can create a poll or ask a question and get a response. Other parishes have the ability to place polls on their website. But the problem with these is that you can sometimes have the same respondent respond multiple times, and you can only ask one question at a time. In my humble opinion, one of the best ways to collect data about what your parishioners are thinking is to send a survey directly to their inbox.

This requires two key elements: 1. As many email addresses as you can possibly get your hands on; 2. An online service which allows you to imbed a survey into an email (I recommend Google Docs). The days of putting paper in the pews and asking people to fill out a survey during the homily are over. So, the next time you need to know what your parishioners are thinking, just ask them... via their inbox!