The beautiful and animated title screen for the Mary our Mother app.
The Mary Our Mother (M.O.M) Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to spreading the messages that Christ has been giving the world through His mother Mary and the Missionaries of the Church. Their mission is to bring the message of prayer, hope, peace, faith, love and mercy to the world. This app is a great tool which brings together tons of resources which helps the Foundation in accomplishing their mission.
I would classify this app under the “mega” app category and you will quickly see why as you start exploring what is available through this app. The app has a very sleek and simple design with only 5 main categories to choose from, which initially makes it very easy to dive into the resources available. It quickly gets a bit overwhelming when you select one of the categories (with the exception of the “About” page) as there seems to be a bit of an endless amount of information. Despite what is behind each click, the presentation is always clean and easy to navigate.
It’s Free
The app is free, which is always a bonus in my books! One of the big downsides, however, is that it needs data or wifi, as most of the information lives on pages it connects to on the internet. So for many folks it wouldn’t be an app that you would use on the road, unless of course you have an unlimited data plan.
About
To give you an idea of the information available to you through this app, I’ll provide an overview of each of the five Categories. The first one is the “About” page. This is a very brief description of the Foundation and their mission; I provided you with most of the information in the first paragraph of this post!
Pray
The second category is “Pray” which provides you with access to daily mass readings, in both the New American Translation and the Jerusalem Bible. There are various daily reflections which you can access from sites such as, “Presentation Ministries”, “Catholic Spirituality Centres” and “The Word Among Us”. The Order of the Mass is also available, which would be handy during mass, but you do need to be connected to access it – so make sure your ringer is off! The Liturgy of the Hours is available through “DivineOffice.org“. There is a list of common prayers, Sunday reading reflections, audio reflections from the Pope Emeritus, podcast of the Divine Mercy Chaplet, the Rosary, Stations of the cross… I think you get the picture, tons of awesome stuff at your fingertips. The page ends with a “More Prayers” menu item, which takes you to a page with a seemingly endless list of links to more prayers.
If you aren’t sure of where to start in your prayer walk, this is it. Catholic’s will enjoy all of the connections to various daily reflections.
Learn
The third category is “Learn”, which again provides you with an excellent list of resources for learning more about the Catholic faith. It offers “Daily Saint Quotes” and access to the Catechism of the Catholic Church through an excellent online version developed by the Knights of Columbus. It also accesses resources such as the “National Catholic Register”, “Catholic News Service”, “L’Osservatore Romano” and “EWTN”. It also provides a link to movie reviews through the “Catholic News Service” site, which I had no idea existed! There is also access to the official Vatican site, Papal Encyclicals and a couple of online bibles. Again, lots of great information and Catholic resources very nicely put together and easy to access.
You can learn more about your Catholic Faith with this great app.
The Busted Halo website is linked from within the app for you to engage in even more content.
Events
Unfortunately I didn’t find the fourth category, “Events”, provided relevant information for a large portion of individuals that would be utilizing the app. The events listed were only those offered by the M.O.M Foundation. I also found it a bit confusing, because in addition to advertising events, it advertised their new app and other product categories for purchase. Not sure how these materials fit into the events page and thought they belonged in the “More” category. I also thought that instead of just focusing on the Foundation events, they could try to somehow bring together a list of major Catholic events that are happening in North America, or around the world. I know that would take a lot of energy to keep up to date, but it would also then make this category worth having and relevant.
More (of Everything)
The last category is “More”, which is really a very good description of what you will find! There is a very long list of resources, beginning with their online store and newsletter and including great information on Eucharistic Miracles, Mystics of the Church and Marian Apparitions. There are also some resources available to help you prepare for Confession and find mass times (although it looks that this only works for those in the Unites States) or prayer groups. It’s a collection of a wide variety of resources to be explored.
There is a lot contained within this app, just have a look at the ‘more’ tab.
This is connecting to various Marian Apparition information pages on the internet.
Overall, I was happy with what this app had to offer. Even though not everything was relevant to me and there are areas for improvement, it did provide me with lots of great Catholic information right at my fingertips. It was designed with a simple and sleek interface, which made the amount of information available seem a little less overwhelming. This is another great resource to have available to you in your journey of faith.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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