Part of Modern Catholic — modular WordPress tools for Catholic parish websites.
A modern WordPress block theme designed for Catholic parish websites, with semantic color palettes, responsive navigation, reusable parish settings, and full Site Editor support.
- WordPress Global Styles and full-site editing
- Responsive shared header, navigation, footer, and page templates
- Overlay and stacked header treatments
- Native two-column and three-column Mega Menu styles
- Semantic Canvas, Surface, Foreground, Primary, Secondary, and Accent color roles
- Sanctuary, Marian Blue, Cloister Green, and Advent Violet style variations
- Palette-aware gradients and photographic duotones
- Raised information panels with palette-aware accent strips, available as a Group/Column style or
mc-card-accent1,mc-card-accent2, andmc-card-accent3classes - Centralized parish name, Mass schedule, reconciliation, address, telephone, and email settings
- Block Bindings and shortcodes for reusable parish information
- Locally bundled Open Sans typography, an optional system font, and a bundled paper texture with no external font dependency
- Upload or clone
modern-catholic-themeintowp-content/themes/. - Activate Modern Catholic under Appearance → Themes.
- Open Appearance → Editor to choose a style variation and customize templates.
- Configure shared parish information under MC Theme Settings.
Site Editor changes may be stored in the WordPress database and override source templates. Deliberately synchronize reusable changes into the theme before publishing a release or exporting with Create Block Theme.
The theme owns presentation, templates, patterns, styles, and layout. Parish functionality such as Bulletins, Alerts, Events, Homilies, Today’s Readings, and updates remains in independently maintained Modern Catholic plugins.
- Add a raised-panel class reference to the admin Color & Style Guide, with palette-role descriptions and example uses.
- Explain how to apply the classes or use the Raised Panel block style in the Site Editor.
- Add palette-aware raised information panels and reusable Accent, Secondary, and Primary strip classes.
- Use Canvas for the content backdrop and Surface for raised panels, while preserving explicit editor-selected block backgrounds.
- Bundle Open Sans locally as the default font, with the system font still selectable.
- Add a desktop search icon to the shared header used by overlay and stacked layouts.
- Add a reusable Stacked (No Overlay) Header pattern that continues to use the shared Header template part.
- Keep the desktop navigation right-aligned when WordPress-generated flex layout CSS is loaded after the theme stylesheet.
- Center Quick Links separators by dividing the shared spacing evenly on both sides.
- Add a WordPress-native semantic color contract with six editable foundation colors and dynamic supporting tones.
- Expand the theme to 13 curated style variations with variable-driven gradients and variation-specific duotones.
- Add the Modern Catholic admin menu and read-only Color & Style Guide.
- Add automatic contrast, shared status roles, accessible focus treatment, and regression checks.
- Add a fully formatted GitHub README with Modern Catholic branding, compatibility badges, installation guidance, component boundaries, and GPL-3.0-only licensing.
- Refine semantic styles, responsive navigation, header treatments, Mega Menu layouts, and portable theme assets.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.0 only (GPL-3.0-only). The bundled paper texture is distributed under the same license. Open Sans is bundled under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 in assets/fonts/open-sans/OFL.txt.