“We have a devotion to the Holy Spirit, and we pay very close attention to the Holy Spirit,” explains John Bertolo of the Toronto branch of the Paulist Associates, a lay association for people who embrace Paulist spirituality. “If you pay attention to the Holy Spirit that’s going to bring a lot of ideas. That’s going to bring a lot of charisms. It’s difficult to define.”

In fact, ever since founder Fr. Isaac Hecker was gobsmacked with visions of the Holy Spirit inspired by St. Paul, the Paulists have been avoiding such definitions. They wouldn’t want to limit the Holy Spirit to any neat verbal formulas.

Evangelizing North America’s millennials Written by Michael Swan, The Catholic Register Hollywood is a tough town, but Paulist Productions president Fr. Frank Desidero is a tough priest. It takes big money to get a film in front of eyeballs either on movie screens or on television. In 1989 the Paulists made Romero on a shoestring, but with an idea in their heads and a camera in their hands the Catholic biopic snuck past a lot of bigger budget movies made by filmmakers. In the 1960s and 1970s Paulist productions produced Insight, a syndicated series of 30-minute dramas that over the years employed the likes of Carol Burnett, Walter Matthau, Rod Serling and Michael Crichton and won five Emmys. Ironically, in the 500 channel universe, it’s more difficult to sneak a smart, Christian production into the mainstream. “It was getting harder and harder to make things for network and cable,” explains Desidero. “And pretty much impossible to retain the copyright. And more and more difficult to retain any kind of creative control where you would actually be able to have Christian content.” Desidero hasn’t taken that as a sign Paulist Productions should fold up its tent. Instead, the company’s latest production was launched on the Internet in April. There are now six of the 12 first-season episodes of Tyler’s Ride up on www.tylersride.com. New five-minute episodes go up every Tuesday. It’s the story of a spoiled, rich 23-year-old being forced to take responsibility for his life as his friends and family lose patience. “The authentic Christian message that’s at the heart of the show is that individuals have to take responsibility for their own lives, and seek out a spiritual path for themselves,” Desidero said. Why opt to portray the lives of the rich and privileged in a Christian drama? “The audience we’re going after is primarily the spiritual searchers in their 20s. We made a choice that that was the demographic we wanted to go after — and also people who use computers for entertainment,” said Desidero. “We figured our protagonist has to be a lot like the audience we wanted to go after.” If Tyler’s Ride covers its costs Paulist Productions will film 12 more episodes. Making money is a matter of offering Tyler’s Ride as content to advertising-driven web sites, and collecting a share of their advertising revenue in return. “Then what we’re hoping is that if we attract a big enough audience we will actually attract our own advertisers — companies that want to sponsor us because we have this faith-based, family-friendly content,” Desidero said. More than just the traditional TV audience of people who passively watch, the Internet audience is plugged into the show and interacts with the characters. There are blogs based on each of the characters, behind the scenes photo galleries, and downloadable videos and wallpaper. Nor would Paulist Productions say no to a shot at regular TV. Success for Tyler’s Ride isn’t just a matter of the bottom line, said Desidero. The Paulists have an evangelical purpose whenever they go out with an idea in their heads and a camera in their hands. “In other words, are people’s lives being touched in some positive way?”

“Isaac Hecker, one of his main insights was, ‘OK, we’ve got the institution of the church down fine. We’ve got the hierarchy. We’ve got papal infallibility. Now we can leave a lot of room for what the Spirit is about,’” explains Fr. Frank DeSiano from the Paulist headquarters in Jamaica, Queens, N.Y.

“In the sense of Christ being present in the world, in the lives of everybody animated by the Spirit, (Hecker) saw this as the real Pentecost — when everyone is animated by the Holy Spirit and open to where the Holy Spirit is leading and guiding them.”

The improvisational skills of the Paulists go beyond moments of inspiration courtesy of the Holy Spirit. It’s also a matter of making the most out of whatever they’ve been given.

The dozen Paulist Associates in Toronto are one small example of how the Paulists have found new ways of spreading themselves out over the continent. Unlike Third Order Franciscans or Benedictine Oblates, the Paulists are new to the business of infecting the laity with their spirituality. The Associates are only 10 years old.

The Paulists aren’t about to tell their Associates how to live the spirituality without becoming Paulist priests. They’ve laid down the rhythm, and they’re going to let the Associates discover the melody.

“We really under-structured the Paulist Associate model deliberately, because we want to see what will come out of these various groups and various associations without us telling them what to do,” said DeSiano.

Bertolo, a 46-year-old insurance broker who has been a member of the Paulist-run St. Peter’s parish in Toronto for 20 years, is constantly surprised by how he and his companions in the Paulist Associates have been told to run with it.

“God didn’t confine charisms to religious communities or diocesan priests. It’s obviously spread out to the laity as well,” said Bertolo. “What we’re really doing is just living the spirituality and the charisms of the Paulists in our daily lives.”

Bertolo finds himself excited to be included in the history of the Paulists. It’s a history full of innovation and opportunities grabbed out of thin air.

The Paulists started the first Catholic magazine in the United States. They founded the oldest Catholic book publishing company in North America. They pioneered a thoughtful religious foray into television programming as producers of the syndicated series Insight in the 1960s. They have launched perhaps the most successful internet ministry aimed at young adults at www.bustedhalo.com. But Busted Halo didn’t settle for the internet, and has since launched itself on Sirius Satellite Radio.

The Paulist reputation as the Catholic media moguls is based largely on the success of Los Angeles-based Paulist Productions, whose biggest hit was the 1989 feature Romero starring Raul Julia as the martyred archbishop of El Salvador.

But Paulist Productions hasn’t stopped there. Faced with escalating costs and a more restrictive film and television industry, the priestly producers have launched their latest production, Tyler’s Ride, on the internet (see sidebar).

The New York-based society of priests has often been thought of as a uniquely American expression of the church. But there’s a long history of Paulist innovation in Canada.

Isaac Hecker’s first visit to Canada came the year after the Paulists were founded. In the winter of 1859 he and an associate were driven in an open sleigh across the St. Lawrence River to preach at St. Patrick’s in Quebec City. The trip across the frozen river almost scared the heck out of Hecker, but he was back in Canada the next year to preach in Saint John, N.B.

Toronto-born Fr. Frank Stone brought that sense of innovation to St. Peter’s parish in the 1950s. He pioneered the idea of the “Catholic Information Centre,” raising the money to build the complex of classrooms, offices and library where thousands have been introduced to Catholic faith, or have learned to deepen their faith over the last half-century. The Catholic Information Centre was a model taken up in cities across Canada. Today the Toronto centre is known as the Paulist Ministry Centre.

In those days of reputed clerical autocracy, Stone employed a raft of lay people to help him teach the basics of the faith to people who came to the centre.

Unsatisfied with just waiting for them to walk through the door, Stone also launched the centre into radio production and built a studio in the basement. Again, lay people ran it. Stone was also on an advisory board that helped the CBC fine tune its religious programing.

Out of a single parish, and a little, bunker-like building in Toronto Stone spread the Paulist influence across Canada.

“He was kind of making it up by the seat of his pants,” recalls the current pastor of St. Peter’s, Fr. Jim McCabe.

McCabe has been a Paulist over 50 years, and through that third of Paulist history he’s seen a lot of that impulse to try new things which drove Stone.

“It’s not accepting what is, but always expecting what more can be,” said McCabe.

June 19-21 seven Paulist Associates and four Paulist priests will travel from Toronto to Washington to take part of the 150th anniversary celebrations. It’s perhaps a sign of the times that there will be more lay associates than priests there to mark the milestone, but since Cardinal Edward Egan opened the cause for Isaac Hecker’s sainthood Jan. 27 nobody is looking at the numbers worried about vocations and a shrinking, aging community of priests. They see rather the expansion of Paulist vision. And more opportunities for improvisation.