Mission Matters: July 26, 2016

This week’s “Parish Table Talk”: Pokémon Go to evangelize; Project Flashlight; The question of the Catholic vote; #ThanksNFP; plus this Thursday’s blog post.

Watch for this Thursday’s Post:

Let’s Make Marriage Preparation Relevant by Edward Herrera, Director of the Office of Marriage and Family Life

• Augmented evangelization: “Pokémon Go” is the new craze among teens and young adults interested in augmented reality games.  Some churches in the U.S. are taking advantage of their status as “Pokémon stops” to dive into street ministry and strengthen the notion of community in their neighborhoods.  Besides Pokémon Go fans, could you also catch some souls?

• A Flashlight on homelessness:  Powered by St. Vincent de Paul Baltimore, Flashlight is an all-night sleep out event that challenges teams and individuals to raise funds and awareness for thousands of homeless families, men, women and children in Baltimore each night.  If you think your parishioners would be interested in participating as “sleepers” or volunteers on Saturday, November 5, please share this information.  Live bands, campfires, DJs, food, and much more awaits all participants!

• Analyzing the Catholic vote: Crux.com published this forthright article that examines the latest poll released by the Pew Research Center on religion, race, and political affiliation. In the middle of mixed messages, unexpected political violence, conventions, party nominations and media attacks, where do Catholics stand?

• An appeal to spread awareness about NFP: Since we are officially celebrating National Natural Family Planning Awareness Week, the grassroots organization Women Speak for Themselves invites parishes and parishioners to use and promote the hashtag: #ThanksNFP.  This initiative, born in response to a campaign from proponents of birth control that has taken over social media sites, aims to help overturn myths that are so prevalent about fertility-awareness based methods. So, please say, share, tag, and tweet “Thanks natural family planning!” #ThanksNFP through your social media outlets and ask your parishioners to do the same.  Suggested posts can be found on the WSFT blog and Facebook page.

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