One day, around Christmas 1994, it all came together for Bill VanSmoorenburg. He'd been thinking about how computer "hyperlinks" were just like the church's teachings. "It's like Jesus' cloak that couldn't be divided because it was all one thread," he says. "In the same way, church teaching has an integrity. Every aspect is consistent with all the other points. Everything depends on everything else."

VanSmoorenburg saw that a computer program could illustrate those infinite links for a diverse audience - both those with little knowledge of the church and teachers.

"And a CD-ROM program wouldn't only illustrate the faith, it would make an exciting computer product," says VanSmoorenburg. As a religious bookstore owner, he wasn't seeing any Catholic CD-ROMs for churches or people's home computers.

His brother-in-law, John Calhoun, creates CD-ROMs for the medical industry. When VanSmoorenburg told him of the lack of software for Catholicism, Calhoun suggested designing programs to fill the niche. They began work on Welcome to the Catholic Church on CD-ROM.

VanSmoorenburg outlined the features he'd want in the program - history, church teaching, prayer, liturgy, structure of the church and the Bible. He hired Bridgett Bartholomew to learn the technical aspects of programming, and together, with Calhoun's expertise, they designed their first products.

More than 700 paintings of scriptural scenes by 1900 century artist James Tissot help illustrate the text and are accompanied by sacred music from chant chorale Schola Pacifica. The disc includes the Revised Standard Version: Catholic Edition of the Bible, a dictionary of Biblical terms, maps and summaries. Along with the Bible Welcome to the Catholic Church includes all the Vatican II documents, The Way of the Lord Jesus by Germain Grisez, The Sources of Catholic Dogma by Denzinger, Lives of the Saints, Catholic Church History by Fr. Eberhardt, a chart of church structure, and much more.

By June, Harmony Media was ready to take it to the Religious Booksellers Trade Exhibit in Chicago. They knew they had a good program, but even so were flabbergasted at the booksellers' response. Every bookstore representative who came to their booth ordered the program, and every publisher said it wanted to carry it.

"After that we knew it would go well," says VanSmoorenburg, who is now the president and publisher of Harmony Media.

VanSmoorenburg's career before launching the Catholic programs, seems almost tailor-made to prepare him for the work.

After two years of college at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Calif., VanSmoorenburg studied for two more years at Mount Angel Seminary in Mt. Angel, Oregon, where he received his bachelor's degree in philosophy. It was there that he felt that he might have a vocation to the priesthood.

Following the usual practice of sending seminarians to a different institution if they did their undergraduate work at Mount Angel, Archbishop William Levada, now of San Francisco, sent VanSmoorenburg to Mount St. Mary's in Emmitsburg, Md., in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

"When I was actually there, living with those guys, I realized there was great difference between them and myself" says VanSmoorenburg. "They wanted to celebrate the sacraments; I wanted to propagate the faith."

He counts his years at the seminary a tremendous experience, even though he did discover there that he wasn't called to be a priest.

VanSmoorenburg was a bit lost after he left Mount St. Mary's. When he asked himself what drove him, he realized it was the love of the teachings of the church. "God must want me to teach," he decided.

It seemed a natural next step; for years he had been a catechist. VanSmoorenburg taught religion for three years at Regis High School in Stayton. During the first two years he lived in a local rectory until his '92 marriage to Shelly Anderson.

"There's the most marvelous group of teachers at Regis," says VanSmoorenburg. "We had many discussions over what it means to be called by God to a certain field - like teaching. Many of them knew they had been called to teaching - and you could see it in their interactions with students."

Regis principal Doug Wasco remembers VanSmoorenburg as being a good teacher - sincere, thorough and sound. VanSmoorenburg, however, realized early on that he wasn't a teacher by nature. "I was drawn towards something else," he says. "I felt like I had to keep going, keep moving."

Today Shelly is busy in their home, where their six children - Clara, William, Anna, Louisa, Lincoln, and Isabel keep the couple busy. The family are members of Sacred Heart Parish in Gervais Oregon, and Harmony Media is now based in Brooks. Between family and Harmony, Bill VanSmoorenburg just may have finally found his calling.

Adapted from an article written by Kristen Hannum of the Catholic Sentinel

February 21, 1997 in Portland Oregon

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