Dear friends of the Catholic Doors Ministry,

First of all, may I take this opportunity to wish you all an early Happy Easter and many more to come. I pray that all of you are experiencing a spiritual cleansing through the Sacrament of Confession in preparation for the Easter celebration of the glorious resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Such would fulfill the first three precepts of the Church.

The first precept of the Catholic Church states: "You shall attend Mass on Sundays and on holy days of obligation and rest from servile labour." The second precept states: "You shall confess your sins at least once a year." The third precept states: "You shall receive the sacrament of the Eucharist at least during the Easter season." (Catechism of the Catholic Church # 2042)

To ensure the continuation of the ongoing email service of the Catholic Doors Ministry, it has become necessary to inform you of problems that we have been experiencing.

Viruses, I am sure you are all aware of them and many of you must have had one or more. During the past few months, the Catholic Doors Ministry has been receiving about 20 per day. It may become necessary to once more change our email address so all those viruses will bounce back to where they have come from. There is a way that you can help us to cut back on incoming viruses. Whenever you send an email to the Catholic Doors Ministry, never send copies of the email to others or never send an email to the Catholic Doors Ministry as a copy of an email going to someone else. Lately we have been receiving many emails that contained as many as 100 emails addresses, the Catholic Doors Ministry's email being a copy of an email sent to someone else. When this is done, 100 persons getting the same email, all 100 emails addresses now find themselves on all 100 computers. Should 1 of those computers be infected my a virus that sends itself out to all the email addresses it can find on the infected computer, I can assure you that the Catholic Doors Ministry will receive a copy of that virus. If 10 computers become infected, the Catholic Doors Ministry will receive 10 viruses. By never sharing everyone's email addresses with others, you help to cut back on the spreading of viruses.

A second problem is spamming. Some individuals who visit the Catholic Doors Ministry take upon themselves to mail news pages, poems, petitions, you name it, we get it. This is unsolicited email, some being dozen of pages long, others having very long attachment. As of year 2004, all this email is forwarded to spamcop.net for the purpose of closing down email addresses that spam. No one, including the volunteers of the Catholic Doors Ministry, have the time to read all this junk mail.

A third problem is the abuse of the email service that is available to those who have prayer intentions. There are those who send as many as 3 emails per day, each with different prayer intentions. In such a case, it is not necessary to send 3 emails since all the intentions can and should be listed in one email. And then there are those who send different, or the same, prayer intention, day after day, although they have already been told in their first response that their needs have been placed before the Altar of the Lord Jesus during the daily celebration of the Holy Mass. While it is understandable that individual needs may change, there is no doubt that God knows these changes and there is no need to write every day. The over-usage of the email service by one person slows down the processing service whereas emails are answered in 24 to 48 hours versus being answered within a few hours of being received. Consequently, many are penalized because of a handful of individuals.

Every month, approximately 20 emails are deleted from the Catholic Doors Ministry mailing list. Why? Because some individuals never empty their mail boxes. When the newsletter goes out, it bounces back with a note saying that the email (newsletter) cannot be delivered because the person's email box is full. The worst two email services are hotmail and aol. If you are using any of those email services and you are registered for our monthly newsletter, please make sure that your email box is never full if you wish to continue receiving this service.

Now you have gained a greater understanding of the ups and downs of managing an internet ministry. With everybody's cooperation, some of the above concerns can be eliminated while others can become manageable. Thank you for the time you have taken to read the aforementioned.

In the love of Jesus and Mary,

Fr. Maurice Levesque

March 30, 2004

____________________________

GUEST BOOK

March, 2004 saw the creation of our 3 rd Guest Book of the year. The number of entries being posted in the Catholic Doors Ministry Guest Book has increased over last year. To view some or all of these entries, please visit:

http://www.catholicdoors.com/guest/2004-03.htm

____________________________

HOMILIES

Seven homilies are available for April, 2004. The list is located below. To view these homilies, please visit:

http://www.catholicdoors.com/homilies/index.htm

040404 - Passion (Palm) Sunday
040408 - Holy Thursday
040409 - Good Friday
040410 - Easter Vigil
040411 - Easter Sunday (Resurrection of the Lord)
040418 - 2 nd Sunday of Easter
040425 = 3 nd Sunday of Easter

____________________________

PRAYERS

Only two prayers were added to the website during the past month. We have now achieved our goal of 1,000 prayers being available to our visitors. You can view the index of these prayers at:

http://www.catholicdoors.com/prayers/index.htm

The two new prayers consist of:

As A Little Child I Loved You
Petitition to Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompeii
As previously stated, our prayer section is being redesigned. Letters "A" to "O" have been completed. In alphabetic order, you can now find any of the prayers under their (1) "Title" and/or under their (2) "First Line." The following is a sample of how prayers are now listed:

"Our Father Who Art In Heaven..." (Lord's Prayer)

In the above example, the first part represents the first line of the prayer. In the round brackets, you will find the name of the prayer.

In a case where you only see something like, "O Queen of Heaven" without any round brackets, this means that the first line of the prayer is "O Queen of Heaven" and the name of the prayer is also "O Queen of Heaven."

____________________________

To UNSUBSCRIBE, please go to: http://www.catholicdoors.com/bravenet/maillist.htm, enter your email address and click on unsubscribe.

For a CHANGE OF EMAIL ADDRESS, please follow the above steps, then enter your new email address and finally, click on subscribe.