Father Ed Benioff
His new evangelization/catechesis site
My parish priest, Father Ed Benioff, has done a tremendous job growing our parish. We had ~30 new Catholics join the Church through the Order of Christian Initiation as Adults (OCIA) at Easter and there’s a similar size class signed up for OCIA this year.
In the decade that Father Ed has been my parish priest, he has grown my faith immensely. He’s an amazing homilist. When I was growing up Protestant, I was told Catholics never talk about sin and salvation. Father Ed does every week. His messages inspire and encourage, but also challenge. You’ll see that in the videos linked below.
In addition to his duties as our parish priest, Father Ed runs a wonderful program Feed My Poor that provides meals for the homeless in Los Angeles. I urge you to consider donating to it.
Father Ed’s also started a website to evangelize the unchurched and catechize searchers and new Catholics on a website called SmartGuy:
There’s a lot of useful resources provided, including:
A guided 30-day faith journey that provides daily videos “designed to help you experience faith, not just learn about it.”
Father Ed’s not the only person using SmartGuy to get messages out. Rather, there seems to be a ton of self-help videos by other folks. As a result, I find the site somewhat difficult to navigate, which is why I provided the links above. If you stick to Father Ed’s content you’ll be in great shape.