Last October I found myself at Chicago O’Hare Airport waiting to board a plane back to San Diego. Near my gate were two young Dominican sisters who, judging by their habits, were novices. I asked them where they were from and learned that their congregation operates a convalescent home on Chicago’s southwest side.
“Where are you headed?” I asked.
“To the Holy Land!” they said in unison with unrestrained excitement.
“Will you pray for me?”
“Of course! What is your name?”
“Chris Check.”
“From Catholic Answers?” asked one of them. “Catholic Answers saved my vocation!”
She explained that while she was discerning her vocation, she had no end of questions about Church teaching but that by regular recourse to catholic.com she was able to resolve them all. Deo Gratias!
If you are a supporter of Catholic Answers, then you saved this sister’s vocation. There would be no catholic.com—indeed, there would be no Catholic Answers—without your support.
We have big plans for catholic.com. We are determined to make it the first place on the World Wide Web where people come for answers about the Catholic faith. To achieve this, two things are required. First, we need to launch a redesigned site that offers a seamless user experience. I can tell you the vast majority of that work is done. The new site is simpler and more inviting. What’s more, we have upgraded our internal search engine so that the most relevant articles, videos, and audio files appear as the top results to the millions of searches made every year on our website. We have the wealth of content; our new search engine will vastly improve how it is ordered and presented.
The second thing we need is a considerable investment in search engine optimization (SEO) so that when people “google” questions about the Catholic faith, the top result will be catholic.com and not some site with a heterodox or heretical answer. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that most of the investment in the new website is not in the design or “look,” it’s in the behind-the-scenes programming necessary to get Catholic Answers at the top of internet searches.
We are ready to do this work, some of which we will do in house and some of which we will contract out. The total bill for the new website is $174,000. We’ve already raised $90,000, so we have $84,000 to go. Great news: we have a matching challenge for $25,000. Please help us meet this goal and save more nuns’ vocations!
Donate here today and save a vocation.
—Christopher Check, President