One of the tragedies of the Church’s collision with current technology is really poor web design. Catholic sites, in particular parish websites, are often the worst offenders to beautiful web design.
While someone who doesn’t love the Church will, understandably say, “who cares?”, it really is important. The Church’s business is the Sacraments, and as such is concerned as well with the sacramental (this sense being lesser than those Sacraments which impart sanctifying grace). Sacraments are outward signs of a hidden, sacred reality. Being both spirit and flesh, man is himself sacramental, and everything that he does is also.
Web design is no less a part of the good work of man than any art. Art has a particularly sacramental nature, as its nature is to make something apparent; and, obviously, so does anything that belongs to the Church. Thus, the art of web design, when used for the propagation of the Faith, must be preeminently sacramental. Websites which speak of the Church should do so with great dignity in accordance with their sacred content. In fact, it is my opinion that good Catholic web design can actually be better than any other site design, based on the sublimity of art, philosophy and content.
Having deplored the sorry state of Catholic web design for a long while, I’ve finally been finding some excellent examples of really great Catholic websites - and I’ve been excited about it. I am listing these sites here for the benefit of any who would wish to be inspired to create or just view excellent Catholic design.
Feel free to let me know of others, which I may post to this page. Of course, it will never be an exhaustive list, especially as the list will continue to grow.
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Of course, there’s the Vatican website, which was one of the first really nice Catholic sites. (Though I think it does need an update.)
The following three are related:
St. John Cantius Parish in Chicago
The Canons Regular of St. John Cantius
Holy Family in Columbus, Ohio
St. Mary in Delaware, Ohio