DAILY CATHOLIC   Monday, November 24, 1997   volume 8, no. 37

      It is only appropriate that during this final week of the Church liturgical year in which we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King, we review the site Christus Rexat www.christusrex.org, one of the oldest Catholic sites on the net, established in 1994. Though it is one of the oldest and most visited internationally, boasting of numerous world-wide awards both authentic and suspect, it is by far one of the slowest loading of sites. Like an art film that is popular with critics but not the public, this site has garnered countless awards, but for browser practicality and "quick fixes" it pales in comparison with the sites previously reviewed here. Operated by the Christus Rex et Redemptor Mundi organization headed by Executive Director Michael Olteneau, it caters to an international clientele that few other world-wide web sites reach. As an example, they offer the Lord's Prayer in 30 languages and currently on their home page, are concentrating on the repression of religious freedom in Asia, primarily China, featuring many links to specific stories which focus on this persecution of the Church behind the great wall.

     Their greatest attraction is the countless images of great religious art from around the world, including the Vatican, its museums and Sistine Chapel as well as numerous churches in Rome and throughout Italy, the Holy Land, and other landmark museums. If you are a true connoisseur of the arts, this site is for you and you won't mind taking your time browsing these works of art on-line for inherent with this site, because of the plethora of images stored, is PATIENCE. Unless you have mega RAM capacity on your computer and a super fast Intel chip be prepared to wait a long time for the pages to load. Too long for today's net browser. Yes, it receives many hits, but few stay because of the frustration with waiting so long for the pages to come up. Like many other sites, they offer links to major documents, but the three sites previewed here over the last three weeks (New Advent Supersite, EWTN, and CatholiCity) offer the same at much, much faster speeds. Christus Rex offers more images than any Catholic site we can think of, but because of the slow downloading time, is really only a lure for the serious art student doing research. For the casual browser, after the first few minutes of waiting they usually move on to another site that loads faster. Browsers are not known for their patience and this is the biggest setback to the Christus Rex site. Because of its unique content, we like to naturally give this site a full decade but because of the constant frustration of waiting, and waiting, and waiting...we must deduct half, therefore giving Christus Rex FIVE HAIL MARY's

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Visitors in 1997