I must agree with Dave Walker, the cartoonist, that the vocations promotion stuff that came out for Good Shepherd Sunday has not exactly hit the spot. I was so appalled by the type of imagery - I understand that 'manga style' is something Japanese - that I chucked the posters in the bin. They didn't strike me as something that would engage anyone over 12, never mind sophisticated (sic) University students. Dave Walker says this on his website:
"I can see why they are only targetting it at 10 year olds - 8 or 9 year olds just wouldn’t be suited to being in a religious order at all.Dave also criticises the Bishops' Conference website, and I quite agree:"The cartoons are in a ‘manga’ style apparently. I don’t really ‘get’ manga, but then I don’t get lots of things because I am old. I have to say I like the stories of real people on the website, but the poster doesn’t really make me want to look at the website in the first place as it doesn’t give me any idea what it is about."
"As an aside, the Catholic Church website in England and Wales must be the worst religious website in the UK. I can’t look at most of it because the menus quite simply don’t work. It might just be Firefox they don’t work in, but I’m not about to fire up Internet Explorer to find out in case I break something."It's about time we really got to grips with communications. Maybe if we had something decent to put out there people might give more to the Catholic Communications collection.
13 comments:
Yes, they're pretty ghastly, but it's only the latest in a long line of uninspired vocations posters. Do you remember the infamous "tools of the trade for priesthood"? Then again, I've yet to meet anyone who's applied to seminary as a result of seeing a vocations poster :)
I agree with you and Gildas wholeheartedly.
Not only do these posters not help, but actually at times they are embarassing. What does the artist think we are, 12 years old...!?
One little detail did amuse me on this poster - that the Benedictine monk is definitely EBC as he has the EBC flaps on his cowl (or whatever they're called).
The Catholic Church website and indeed the whole Ecclesdon Square beaurocracy needs a good shake up. The Church is about communication but practically every office their seems to fail in this regard, to such significant degree.
Sorry, I meant "bureaucracy".
has to said padre, that was a crackin post to get back into the bloggin business. I soooo agree with all ur observations. These people murder the gospel message by trying to make it cool. If they just concentrated on following jesus and not on trying to be what they are not then i tink things wud crank up a bit. We are not selling the priesthood like a job. The reason vocations are declining is not because we're not making good posters it cause the church needs more renewal and less rubbish, more sacraments and less meetings about how to do things. I HATE MEETINGS about nothing, thats all these people seem to do, have meetings about phoning other people and asking them to phone someone else to do something arghhhhh.
Don't forget all the 'networking' and 'emailing'.
Fr J, aren't networking and emailing critical to the new evangelisation in your opinion??? :)
Depends who you're networking with and what you're emailing
I saw a poster on a bus stop once, it was the "what's your goal?" one. I think it's a total waste of money, personally. Vocations are nurtured by good parenting and good role models at school and in the parish. Not bus stops.
I thought the 'what's your goal' poster was one of the least offensive of them all. Still posters don't make priests.
Bus stops can be quite challenging places though.
They are most challenging when the bus doesn't come
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