Ryan Bilodeau's Blog

The other day I launched on Kickstarter an effort to help fund a Catholic Booster documentary aimed at highlighting Catholics living out their faith during the coronavirus pandemic. Please consider supporting us.

Help Fund a Catholic Booster Documentary was originally published in Catholic Booster on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Parishes may be closing, but this Domestic Church is flourishing #catholicbooster

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I met Jenny Kennedy as a high school senior at the National Right to Life Committee National Conference in Pittsburgh where she competed in their countrywide oratory contest. Almost 20 years later, she and her husband Tyler are the parents of 4 beautiful kids and I am approaching my wedding day.

I would say that “time flies,” but a little recency bias is making it difficult to pen those words. When a global pandemic shuts down the majority of society itself, time has a way of seemingly coming to a standstill.

Jenny writes in to Catholic Booster this week with a picture of her children “attending” Mass at home. As was the case with the spotlight we did on Steve, the Kennedy family has transformed their home in small ways to allow for big spiritual growth. In this case we see the kids experiencing the Mass on television with as much reverence and innocence as it is experienced in church.

The reality for the Kennedy family and others is that the forced conversion of one’s domicile into the locus of spirituality harkens back to the first days of the Church when Christians gathered to worship in homes and not parishes. In many ways, it seems, this time of coronavirus pandemic brings us back to our roots as Christians. And if we are once again, like then, on the dawn of dramatic Christian evangelization, then we have much to which we can look forward.

Parishes may be closing, but this Domestic Church is flourishing was originally published in Catholic Booster on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The coronavirus is “altar-ing” our faith life #catholicbooster

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This submission is from my friend Steve Poirier, with whom I attended seminary at St. John’s in Brighton, MA where we were both discerning the priesthood.

Without the ability to attend Mass, Steve responded by setting up an “altar” at home in his domestic church. In an email, Steve remarked, “With heartfelt gratitude let us give thanks for the great Triumph of the Cross.”

The devotion of the laity in this time is a great gift for the entire Church, and a reminder that our loving God is always near.

The coronavirus is “altar-ing” our faith life was originally published in Catholic Booster on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Job Description

This job can be done remotely.

I am looking for a media professional with existing ties (or could form them) to national Catholic blogs, papers, TV, radios, etc. that can help promote Catholic Booster through earned media.

The deliverable I am hiring for is not a lead, but actual story placements (earned media) in any of those mediums. I will pay per placement.

About the Employer

Catholic Booster is a project by Ryan Bilodeau that spotlights beautiful acts of faith during a pandemic to give Catholics a spiritual “booster shot” while also evangelizing the billions of people at home keeping vigil on the eve of a medical cure.

Catholic Jobs.com: Media Relations

Careers at Catholic Booster

Catholic Booster is Hiring was originally published in Catholic Booster on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Here is a collection of press that we have thus far received:

Catholic Booster Shines Light on Acts of Faith During Coronavirus Pandemic says Ryan Bilodeau

Ryan Bilodeau Evangelizes and Promotes Coronavirus Positivity Through Catholic Booster

Press Received for Catholic Booster #catholicbooster was originally published in Catholic Booster on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Daughters of St. Paul launch “Storytime with the Sisters” to help families during pandemic #catholicbooster

Please promote #catholicbooster or subscribe to Catholic Booster on Instagram , Twitter or  Facebook

Last year I met Sister Helena Burns at a Theology of the Body lecture she gave in New Hampshire. She is the vocation director for the Daughters of St. Paul, who are “media apostles who dedicate their lives to creatively share the Gospel of light, love, and beauty with as many people as possible.” In “following [their] model Saint Paul, [the Daughters of St. Paul] live Christ so that [they] can give Christ in today’s digital world.”

One new initiative about which she recently told me is “Storytime with the Sisters” which is being launched by her religious order to help support families whose children are home during the pandemic. The #MediaNuns are providing this content for families who may need some extra faith support while Coronavirus brings anxiety to people worldwide.

And we at Catholic Booster are so proud of their efforts.

Families can also follow their social media feeds and the hashtag #SpiritualCommunion for more free content. And while you’re at it, they’re asking people to “enjoy, share, and count on the prayers of our sisters!”

Daughters of St. Paul launch “Storytime with the Sisters” to help families during pandemic was originally published in Catholic Booster on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

While US flattens the curve, Fr. Peschel & Fr. Mello take to the skies #catholicbooster

Please promote #catholicbooster or subscribe to Catholic Booster on Instagram , Twitter or  Facebook

Below is a beautiful example of the kind of stories we at Catholic Booster are attempting to spotlight during this time of pandemic. Below Fr. Chris Peschel shares his story:

One of the most moving things so far during quarantine was the ability to take the Blessed Sacrament up and around my diocese 3 times in a gesture of blessing and deliverance.Realizing there is also a spiritual component to this whole pandemic, and that many faithful Catholics feel distant or cut off from the Sacraments as their ordinary way of connecting with God, I decided to ask my parishioner, a pilot, to borrow his plane for an afternoon and offer a diocese wide benediction from above. On one occasion I invited my friend Fr Jay Mello to join us.We prayed litanies, prayers of deliverance, rosaries, and chaplets of Divine Mercy, to ask God to rid us of this plague and bestow His blessing upon his people at this time. The whole pandemic has forced a new creativity in reaching parishioners and all the people of God, but this has to have been one of the most forceful, yet peaceful, gestures that I’ve been able to offer yet.

While US flattens the curve, Fr. Peschel & Fr. Mello take to the skies was originally published in Catholic Booster on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Christ’s light burns brightly at the Gondreau family home on Easter Vigil #catholicbooster

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At a time when Catholics are unable to attend Mass due to the coronavirus pandemic, Providence College Theology professor Dr. Paul Gondreau is struggling most this Triduum with having to miss Mass on the Easter Vigil Mass.

“The hardest thing for me personally during the Triduum will be not being physically present for the Easter Vigil. It’s the highlight of the entire liturgical year for me. I so look forward to it every year.”

What the Gondreau family has decided to do is have their own fire in the backyard fire pit while live-streaming the service of light.

Dr. Gondreau told me that they will “have [their] own candles and … live-stream the Vigil and have [their] own fire with candles during the Service of Light, and then move inside when the service shifts to the inside of the church.”

What a beautiful expression of faith as a family!

During this unprecedented time of COVID-19, the Gondreau family is living out their faith in a beautiful way, giving the rest of us a Catholic Booster in the process.

Christ’s light burns brightly at the Gondreau family home on Easter Vigil was originally published in Catholic Booster on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

SHARE YOUR STORY

Have a story of how you are living out your Catholic faith during this difficult time of COVID-19? Please email Catholic Booster founder Ryan Bilodeau at ryankbilodeau [at] gmail.com with at least one paragraph of content. If photos would help tell the story, then feel free to include them in your email.

ABOUT CATHOLIC BOOSTER

Long after the cure for a coronavirus pandemic that so fiercely threatens mankind’s mortal bodies has been discovered, the world will continue to search for a vaccination against spiritual maladies like loneliness and anxiety.

Even now it searches, and it searches against the backdrop of a worldwide quarantine.

It searches at a time when it seems like time itself has stopped and almost all of mankind is keeping vigil on the eve of a medical cure.

For the Catholic Church, this may be the single greatest chance to evangelize the world in a generation or more. Truly, there may never again be as captive an audience as there is in the present moment.

Now is the time for a spiritual vaccine. Now is the time for a Catholic Booster.

In the coming days and weeks, I will be posting positive stories of Catholics living out their faith during this time of quarantine. These beautiful examples of faith will serve as a:

1. Spiritual booster and inspiration to other Catholics

2. Means of evangelization to non-Catholics who can get a unique lens into Catholic spirituality as lived out in daily life at a time when they are most captive due to the quarantine

Why is beauty important? In this post-truth and relativistic world, Dostoevsky’s famous quote could never ring more true: “Beauty will save the world.”

Interested in buying Catholic Booster gear? Visit our store

About Catholic Booster was originally published in Catholic Booster on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.