Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls! We are hard at work on material that will be released starting September 1, 2019. I am proud to say that Clarifying Catholicism started in 2015 as a one-man endeavor. In 2016, our staff was formalized and expanded to over twenty writers. By the end of this season, we pushed this number to fifty. As of writing this, we have seventy five writers total, and this number is just growing. This is all thanks to our new outreach program, which I will talk about at the end of the article.
For now, let’s focus on this past year. This year, we accumulated over 11,000 video views and 3,200 blog views, completely smashing the record of previous years. We had some outstanding writers this year, and it was fantastic to acknowledge them at our annual awards show (which will be posted sometime this Summer). For now, here are the winners of major awards!
Senior Directors- These fantastic men and women have served Clarifying Catholicism’s various departments longer than any others have! In order to receive this award, it is required that one piece of content was produced and published during this season. Thus, many of our Directors and Trustees who have served since 2015 were not included.
- Senior Video Writer: Angelica Brice (since March 2017)
- Senior Blog Writer: Sarah Strba (since March 2017)
- Senior Cinematographer: Javi Rodriguez (since November 2016)
The John Paul II Award– The John Paul II Award recognizes individuals of outstanding achievement. These talented young people accumulated more views than all others in their respective fields. People can only win this award once, and they are inducted into our John Paul II Society.
- JP II Platinum Award (Most Views Total): Thomas Melgaard
- JP II Award in Directing (Most Views from Directed Content): Mary Ryan
- JP II Award in Video Writing (Most Views from Videos): Maria Flores
- JP II Award in Cinematography (Most Views from Filming): Thomas Gorman
- JP II Award in Blog Writing (Most Views from Blog): Ariel Hobbs
- JP II Award in First-Year Excellence (Most Views from a First Year): Gideon Lazar
Congratulations to these fantastic content creators!
New Trustees
Maria Flores: a former video and blog writer of ours.
Expansion and Changes
2019 will mark a major year in our expansion, as we have finally started a College Ministry Program. So far, we have leadership installed at the University of Notre Dame, Franciscan University, and Benedictine College. More information will come soon.
To accompany this, we have elected an Editorial Board to assist with a greater influx of articles. Their information will be available soon under “about us.”
In May, the Board of Directors voted to change the formal name of our organization and branding to “Clarifying Catholicism: Defending Faith and Reason.” The change comes after many years of calling ourselves the “Defenders of Faith.” While we will keep our traditional seal and continue to defend the faith, we found this would be more effective as a unified brand.
These are just a handful of positive changes that will be coming to the site, so stay tuned for more great content!
-William Deatherage, Executive Director
