Brian McCallMay 2024 Edition Now Available — Preview HERE
Two New Initiatives Coming Soon
August 1, 2024
Commemoration of the Holy Maccabees
Dear Friends of Catholic Tradition,
For decades Catholic Family News has striven to provide reliable news, analysis, apologetics, and spiritual nourishment from a traditional Catholic perspective. In the beginning, the sole means of that apostolate was through this monthly newspaper. Like the householder referenced in the Gospel, we must always bring forth things both old and new (Matt. 13:52). Although everything we “bring forth” at CFN must be rooted in our ancient Tradition, we must adapt the means of bringing that Tradition to this modern, fractured world. Rather than the idealistic delusion of the Modernists, who are enchanted with the “modern world” and “modern man,” we more realistically understand that the modern world has in many ways returned to a great shadow of darkness, one deeper and darker than that which pervaded the world at the time of the Incarnation. Yet, at the same time, that darkness has made more people open to considering the truth of Christ. With the princes and potentates of this world exposed almost daily for what they are, many people, young and old, are searching for something real, something true, good, and beautiful. We at CFN want them to find us so we can help them to find the saving graces offered by the Catholic Church.
In order to aid our apostolate in bringing the truth, goodness, and beauty of Tradition to our darkened world, we will be launching two initiatives in September. First, we plan to open our CFN Premium Channel. Our video apostolate, which was started by the late John Vennari over a decade ago, has grown tremendously in the last few years. Yet, our subscriptions to this newspaper have fallen. Hoping to encourage more people to read this paper, a subscription to the Premium Channel will give access to subscription only programming including:
- a video library covering topics from history, to law, to liturgy;
- an extended version of our Weekly News Roundup with one exclusive story per week;
- a monthly live Q&A session in which premium subscribers can ask questions of our hosts; and
- new interviews and other content that will be constantly updated.
In addition, a Premium Channel subscription will also come with a free subscription to this monthly newspaper (both the e-edition and a paper copy to any address in the U.S. or Canada). A Premium Channel subscription will cost only $6 a month (or $60 if purchased annually). For you, our faithful subscribers, we will be offering an option to upgrade to the Premium Channel during your current newspaper subscription year for only $1 a month. Watch our website and the September newspaper for details about how to join our Premium Channel at this discounted rate. For now, we can let you know that it will be hosted on Locals, a platform for independent creators that will not censor content. If you want to get ready to join our Premium Channel and access unique content, you can create your own Locals account for free now at www.locals.com.
Secondly, we plan to begin introducing some new things to this newspaper. Since we know as traditional Catholics that truth and goodness are metaphysically connected to the beautiful, we will be begin adding more attention to the arts in the paper. We will be featuring artwork created by traditional Catholics, professional and amateur. We invite submissions of original works of art — drawings, sketches, paintings, sculpture, poems, brief short stories, and hymns or other songs. If you are involved with a traditional Catholic school, we would be happy to include in the paper winners of art competitions in your school. Pictures of visual works of art by traditional Catholics would be ideal for inclusion in our monthly paper. Our goal is to include at least one artistic contribution a month. If you would like to submit artwork to be considered for the paper, please send a picture of any visual art or a file containing any written compositions to us at catholicfamilynewsart@gmail.com and we will be happy to consider submissions. As noted, we will prioritize submissions by Catholic schools that feature quality works from young aspiring artists. In addition, we will also be restoring an equivalent of the letters to the editor section of the paper. In conjunction with the Premium Channel, we will be hosting regular Q&A sessions for Premium Subscribers. In addition to having your questions answered on video, we will also be selecting some questions to answer in written form in the newspaper. We are certain that our Premium Subscribers will be asking interesting and pointed questions and look forward to sharing them with you in the newspaper.
We will have more information on both the Premium Channel and updates to the newspaper in the September paper. For now, we ask primarily for your prayers that these initiatives will result in our traditional Catholic content reaching more people and stabilizing our financial position for the future. We ask for your patience as any major changes run the risk of some disruption and some period of time to become accustomed to new features. Unlike the radical changes to the liturgy unleashed by the Modernists, everything we will do will be rooted not only in the traditional doctrine and customs of the Church but also rooted in the traditions of CFN built up for many decades. We count on your continued support so that one day the number of people reading the incredible content of this newspaper will be on par with the number of people watching videos or listening to podcasts. Hopefully these twin initiatives (Premium Channel and updates to the paper) will secure CFN’s future as the premier traditional Catholic media apostolate for decades to come.
We place all these plans, hopes, aspirations, and desires into the hands of our Mother, Our Lady of Fatima. She has guided and protected our work from the very beginning and we trust that anything placed into Her care will most certainly succeed.
In Christ the King,
Brian M. McCall
Editor-in-Chief
Patrick Brill, Ph.D
Ryan Grant
Matthew Plese