Here's the plan for the next stage of our development...
Saturday, 18th November 2006

Dear friends,

As telegraphed in Thursday's email, the next phase of the development of Catholica Australia is going to involve a series of advertisements in local media. Our chief aim at this stage is still one of building the core community — we feel we need about another half-dozen regular contributors to the forum to "spread the work load" — and to build our logistical support base. These first advertisements though are also designed to "test the water" in our outreach to the eventual principal audience we are seeking to serve — those who have dropped out of contact with the Church.

After a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing as to where we would commit our resources at this initial stage we have decided to conduct this test marketing in the local area around where Catholica is published in the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales. We believe the demographic of this area probably has a higher than average percentage of residents who might be interested in the style and objectives of Catholica.

A small ad will run in each issue of The Blue Mountains Gazette in each of the weeks leading up to the end of the year. In addition, the issue of 6th December will be featuring a wrap around advertising Church services in this region in the lead-up to Christmas. We will be taking a more prominent ad in that wrap around. At some stage we also hope to gain advertorial support from Rural Press, the publishers of this newspaper and many other local newspapers around Australia. We will review the effectiveness of this campaign with a view to undertaking more of this sort of promotion next year.

This advertising will be in addition to the other on-going initiatives we are making to promote our work in other media.

I would like to thank all of our commentators and contributors to the forum for your inputs. I think we can all be quietly pleased with our progress so far and the quality of our work.

The excellence continues today and here's an overview of today's commentaries and a look at what we've published over the last seven days.

Who was boss in the early Church? In this essay, Ian Elmer examines what historical research is telling us about the structure of the earliest Christian Church and how it changed due to various influences over time. [more]

Oh, what beautiful roses! In her delightfully subtle way this week Cindy cuts through much of the cant of parish life. We human beings are a funny lot when our priorities are examined in this way! [more]

Best wishes for a great day wherever you happen to be ... in life, and in our world,

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher
Catholica Australia