The Roman Catholic archdiocese for Metro Vancouver will take a
multicultural approach as it becomes the first in Canada to launch a
campaign urging inactive adherents to return to the pews.The Vancouver archdiocese will produce some of the 1,700 TV ads it will broadcast this December in Mandarin and Cantonese, since 20 per cent of the city’s population is ethnic Chinese and many grew up in the Catholic Church in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and elsewhere.
Roman Catholic congregations in Metro and Victoria will adapt TV commercials created by an American organization called Catholics Come Home, which claims it has already increased parish attendance after reaching more than 50 million television viewers through previous initiatives in the U.S.
A spokesman for the Vancouver archdiocese, Paul Schratz, said the idea to create Chinese-language TV ads for B.C. audiences came from Rev. Paul Chu, priest at Canadian Martyrs Church in Richmond. It is one of about half-a-dozen predominantly Chinese-language Catholic churches in Metro.
Catholics Come Home has so far held campaigns in 35 U.S. dioceses, including Seattle, Phoenix, St. Louis, Chicago, and Boston. It says it has helped more than 350,000 people “come home” to the Catholic Church and has increased mass attendance an average of 10 per cent, and as much as 18 per cent.
Even though nearby Seattle had one of the lowest rates of return after its campaign three years ago, Schratz said that Cascadian city’s Catholic parishes still saw a seven-per-cent hike in people in the pews.
Schratz said it’s crucial to take a multi-ethnic advertising approach in Metro Vancouver.
Polls by the respected Pew Forum suggest that 30 per cent of Chinese-North Americans consider themselves Christian, even though Christians make up only a tiny percentage of those who live in East Asia.
In Metro Vancouver, dozens of Catholic parishes are filled mostly by immigrants, especially Filipinos and others from Asia. Many North American Catholics with English as a first language have drifted away from church life.
However, Schratz estimated 90 per cent of the people who were raised Catholic but have stopped attending services “don’t have a dogmatic issue against the church.”
“They mostly began staying away because they got busy in their lives — with Sunday-morning soccer and what have you. Many are just waiting for an invitation to come back.”
In announcing that the “Come Home” campaign will begin in the Advent season in December, Vancouver Archbishop Michael Miller said:
“The more we are committed to proclaiming and passing on our faith, the more we ourselves rediscover the joy of believing. Faith grows when it is widely shared and enthusiastically communicated to others.”
The B.C. ad blitz is expected to cost “a couple of hundred thousand dollars,” Schratz said.
It will be funded by individual Catholic donors, with Metro Vancouver parishes launching a special collection effort this Sunday.