News - March 2020 RSS Feed

Click the title link to read the article and see the photos.

John Fisher’s (corrected spelling) connection to St. Joseph Church, which would eventually become the cathedral of the Diocese of Burlington, began the day he was baptized in the church five days after his birth in 1940, the tenth of 14 children to parents of French Canadian ancestry. The family’s strong faith in God and inclusion in the faith family of St. Joseph Parish strengthened them after the death of Fisher’s father, leaving his mother to raise 12 children alone. After marrying and beginning a family of seven children, the parish that Fisher loved remained the pivotal aspect of his family’s faith and schooling. During the 1990s, when the Internet was born, Fisher began writing website code while employed at IBM and created a website for his department as well as a family website for photos, events, his French-Canadian genealogy and an interest in astronomy. During these years, explained Fisher, the church and the parish were undergoing renovations and changes due to Vatican II. “I could see that during these changes items dear to the parish were going away,” he said, noting, among them, the huge painting of the Last Supper painted by Sinai Richer in 1923, and a memorial to the 633 parishioners who served in the military in World War II and the 22 who gave their lives. “I thought that something should be done to keep people aware of these pieces of our parish history. While researching in the diocesan archives, I came across the insurance company photos of both the old Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and of St. Joseph’s. The cathedral had burned in 1972 and there were many changes at St. Joseph’s. I decided to scan all the photos and put them on my website. The parishioners of both churches would surely enjoy them,” Fisher recalled. Whenever the ardent archivist comes across an historical piece of information about the Cathedral of St. Joseph he adds it to his website. Fisher explained that parishioners recognize his passion for parish history and often bring him their own treasures which he photographs or scans and presents to the pastor or adds to the parish historical archive. “Two of these were very significant,” he noted. “An old photo of the early church and a photo of the carpenters in the church about a year before it was completed. It was so historically interesting that I did about a year of research on the photo and the photographer and even had a reunion of the photographer’s descendants from out of state, here in Burlington. Both original photos are now in the parish rectory.” Most recently Fisher has added photos of two major cathedral projects: renovation and replacement of the steeple and the steps in front of the church. “I created a new webpage for each event and captured some really great photos along the way. The contractor also gave us some really great drone photos of their steeple effort,” he said. Fisher explained the value of photo archives, saying, “One can write the detailed history of a church or a parish, and the reader can form an image based on what they have read, but as they say, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words.’ In my great 1887 photo of the inside of St Joseph’s, I could describe the interior and the 12 carpenters and what each carpenter is holding; however, the photo says it all; and this event only happened for a moment in time, but it has now been captured and available for all to view today.” https://vermontcatholic.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?m=31181&i=653855&p=14

Since the 2018 Diocesan Synod, the Catholic community in Vermont has been pursuing the synod goals of increased and improved evangelization and communication efforts to assist in building more vibrant parishes; a focus on parish website improvement has been one of the first communication initiatives. “I really like the eCatholic tool. I think all the parish (sites) using it that I’ve seen look very clean and appealing,” said Arthur “Jay” Fisher, website administrator for St. Joseph Cathedral Parish in Burlington. “The website is about good marketing.” eCatholic’s mobile-friendly websites are easy to update and manage. Their dynamic and engaging templates and content create a unified, consistent and connected digital presence for Catholic parishes throughout Vermont. “Our traffic has increased month over month since going live in early October,” Fisher said, noting that there were 564 page views by 178 unique users on Christmas Eve alone. For the Cathedral’s website, Mass times, bulletins, the calendar and news sections are the most visited pages. Photo albums, music, architecture and a post about the Vietnamese Mass have also all been visited by hundreds of viewers. A person’s average amount of time spent browsing the Cathedral parish website is more than three minutes, with an average of more than three pages visited. (A general website statistic is that any visit that lasts longer than two minutes is impressive.) “Our Contact Us, Join our Parish and Join the Parishioners’ Email List form have had good response allowing us to update our census data,” Fisher reported. “I was speechless when I saw the amount of traffic on our website,” said Father Lance Harlow, cathedral rector. “It confirmed for us the value of putting in the time and energy to make it accurate and also attractive.” Fisher said eCatholic is versatile and easy to use, but he emphasized the importance of keeping the parish site up to date: “We want to keep our parishioners informed and interested in what is next.” The quality of parish life brings people to the website to find out more about the cathedral, and the website attracts people to Masses, devotions and programs. “What we do as parishioners is on the website, and what they see on the website keeps them involved in the parish,” he continued. But the site is welcoming to visitors too. “The cathedral has become a place of pilgrimage for so many visitors,” Father Harlow said. “That means essentially, with the decreased number of families in the downtown area that our Mass participants are coming increasingly from outside the parish. So, we need to attract their attention and draw them in.” And according to the metrics collected on the site, that concept is working. “We want the site to be the first stop for our parishioners and visitors by having lots of content available as close as their smart phone,” Fisher said; more than half the visits are from people using their cell phones. Every parish in Vermont will transition to the eCatholic website platform within the next year and a half, but three fourths have already launched their new websites. To see the cathedral website, go to stjosephcathedralvt.org.