Behavior psychology and Mass Marketing... as Tools of Evangelization?

Full and Active Participation: The Challenge of “Porta Fidei” and the Promise of Right Brain by Deacon Dominic Cerrato (via Insight Scoop)

Given all that has been said to promote the Year of Faith effectively along with its associated catechetical programs, a new marketing approach needs to be crafted that puts joy before the law. It must lead with the contagious love of Jesus Christ, demonstrating how, by attending these various efforts, the participants will share in that joy by experiencing that love. One way this new marketing approach can be crafted is through the Right Brain Research of Dr. Charles T. Kenny. 22 Right Brain has discovered that a brand is created when people make an emotional connection that transforms the specific product or service into an implicit promise. This promise drives their perceptions, the way they feel, their behavior, and their expectations. By understanding this emotional connection as it relates to the product or service, a highly effective marketing effort can be crafted. The Right Brain approach, inasmuch as it seeks to fulfill a deeply felt emotional need, corresponds directly to the kind of dynamic that moves passive participation to active participation.

Historically, marketing approaches tended to be more left brain. Where left brain describes an analytical approach often expressed through a logical argument, right brain keys in on the emotional benefit for the consumer. As explained in St. Thomas’ ethics, and as illustrated by Fr. Barron’s baseball analogy, these two approaches are by no means mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite: they are inclusive and complementary insofar as the joy (right brain) makes possible a fuller appreciation of the law (left brain). The left brain acts to balance, control, and explain actions that are driven by emotional needs seated in the right brain. All human behavior is an interplay of the left brain and the right brain, a beautiful and synergistic interconnectedness.

Motivating people to participate in a catechetical event is subject to the same universal laws of human behavior and psychology that govern any great brand campaign. These include appealing to one or more of the 47 emotional needs discovered by Right Brain Research, and overcoming one or more of the emotional barriers (i.e., fears) that prevent people from responding. In their commercials, the Catholics Come Home advertising appeals to such emotional needs as: love and acceptance, affiliation, community, hope, intimacy, immortality, and redemption. In those same commercials, they also help people overcome such emotional barriers as: fear of rejection, guilt, fear of judgment, and fear of inadequacy. This achievement can be duplicated using Right Brain Research in the promotion of all catechetical programs.

the Motu Proprio Porta Fidei

I need to read Bellarmine.

And how he explains the separation between temporal authority and spiritual authority.

What Barack Obama Could Learn from St. Robert Bellarmine by Gerald J. Russello

3. Laws affect persons. Bellarmine was adamant in his “On Laymen,” part of a series of works called the Controversiae, published between 1586-89, that “from the fact that political authority is temporal and its end is external peace and that man does not make judgments on internal matters, it is rightly inferred that it can oblige only to perform temporal and external acts but not that it cannot bind in conscience.” This is a crucial point that secularists often overlook, since they have a utilitarian or agnostic view of the law. For them, regulations like the HHS mandate simply preserve “health care” or “equality,” and affect only external actions. For them, such laws do not touch religious belief, which is considered only an internal matter and not one concerned with action.