Godcasts
Weekly church sermons that can be downloaded from the Internet and played on portable audio players have become the Podcasts most in demand, according to analysis of search results at Lycos.com.
"During the past month, searches for Godcasts have risen over 355 percent," said Dean Tsouvalas, writer of the Lycos 50 report. "There are no specific 'Pod preachers' being queried, but it's only a matter of time before the 'Billy Graham' of Podcasts emerges," he wrote in an e-mail.
In the past week, searches for Godcasts were as popular as queries about TV's "ER" and model Naomi Campbell. [Source]
Very few Catholic priests seem to be getting involved in audio recordings of their homilies published as podcasts. A couple make them available as mp3s though without a subscription for podcasts.
Here are some that I like.
Fr. Robert Barron from the Archdiocese of Chicago publishes his homilies weekly at Word on Fire and I have listened to two of his homilies on Pope Benedict XVI and found them to be really good. Technically the sound quality is very good and include a Catholic commercial at the end. That is a commercial for a cemetery and I find a commercial for a cemetery to be very Catholic. After all St. Thomas Aquinas kept a skull on his desk to remind him of the end of earthly life. [Hat tip to Sr. Lorraine of Open wide the doors to Christ! for posting about Fr. Barons site]
Fr. Bryce Sibley of a A Saintly Salmagundi has been publishing his homilies here.
Fr Jim Tucker of Dappled Things occasionally publishes podcasts here via RSS.
Catholic Insider (which has a cool entry page) is a podcast by father Roderick Vonhögen, catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Utrecht, The Netherlands. I just found this site though what I heard so far is good. He actually recorded a podcast right under the balcony when when Pope Benedict XVI was selected and you can hear his joy at the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger and he interviews other people there also overjoyed at the news. (Scroll down here to Habemus Papam to hear it) Here is the url to subscribe if you are using podcast software to track subscriptions.
I have mentioned Jayson Franklin's fine show The Catholic Cast before and here is the subscription url.
PodcastPickle has a couple links to Catholic podcasts.
Obviously there is a lot of room for Catholics to grow in this medium and with the great interest in Godcasts I hope that we don't lag far behind our Protestant brothers in taking advantage of this. The Vatican website should definitely get on this bandwagon (or is that bandwidthwagon?) and make audio translations of all the Pope's audiences and homilies rapidly available. Or at least take advantage of using some of the newer generations of text to speech software available to make these files. Though of course maybe they already do and I just can't find them using the interface on the Vatican's web site. I am convinced they hired a Gnostic web designer because you require hidden knowledge to navigate the site.
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When I become a priest (God-willing!), I plan on setting up a podcasting system... but in 2011, that might be 'so early 00s'!
I think that it will start happening as time goes on... but most priests I know don't even record their homilies! The technology is now cheap enough, but not yet simple enough, for the average Joe to set up a podcast. I think when it gets 'press this button, then click there' easy, it will be more widely accepted.
Given the quality of a fair number of homilies I've listened to over the years, it might be better that a lot of them are not being podcasted right now. It would be nice though if we could get an informal little podcast ring together like St. Blog's.
http://www.desertvoice.org/Audio.html
Hey, i have a religion assignment and i was wandering if you could answer a couple of questions on the coptic rite.
From what tradition did the rite come?
What is the cultural background of the followers of this rite?
Fr. Rod's Catholic Insider is one of my favorite podcasts. I also like the Catholic cast, especially when Jason talks to his grandfather in the conversations with an old man segment....
My pastor video records classes he does for our parish in a series called "Catholic Journey". He has been instrumental in promoting Catholic teaching in our parish and "upgrading" people back to being Catholic.
See more on the program and stream cast at:
Catholic Journey Topic Schedule for this past year
IHMCast
Without a doubt, don't start your day off without Fr. Bob Coy, the best expository speaker in the nation today.
http://www.activeword.org/podcast.xml
Hey jeff, can you change my first link to http://www.discipleradio.com
-jayson
Vatican Radio is the voice of the Pope and has many of his weekly speeches in Italian and summaries and excerpts in English. Most are downloadable. The main English page of use would be the 105-live English section.
Access the main page at:
www.vaticanradio.org
From there you can access all of its various language services.
Blessings.
Please don`t miss this videotribute to John Paul II. Very, very good:
http://www.geocities.com/genjuanpa/
P2P Downloads :
Low resolution, 5Mb. (For forwanding it through mail):
ed2k://|file|Santosubito_lr_es.%20Juan%20Pablo%20II,%20video%20homenaje.wmv|4738914|508D36CD1205E53FC2D6B20217711F0E|/
High resolution (27 MB):
ed2k://|file|Juan%20Pablo%20II%20Homenaje.%20Santosubito%20video_HR.wmv|28986434|8E9983E7C75BBDD35F376BF13F225887|/
Medium Resolution: (13 Mb):
ed2k://|file|Santosubito_Juan%20Pablo%20II,video%20Homenaje_espa%C3%B1ol_stereo.wmv|14327794|83C3C0CD1156F3CA379BC597B8F587BB|/
As someone said above, Vatican Radio makes MP3s of its daily English program available. Best of all, they have it in a Podcast feed.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/vaticanradio105live
I've been big fan of Fr. Roderick's Catholic Insider for a while because (1) he has traveled to interesting places in both Rome and Netherlands on his "sound"-seeing tours and (2) he has an eclectic sense, talking about a wide range of subjects.
There are other really good Podcasts out there on other subjects too. PodcastAlley.com is a good place to find them. Beware, though, there's no FCC to watch over appropriate content.
Also a good one is The Hands and Feet podcast...www.beyourhands.com or look it up in iTunes or podcastalley.com.