Church Teaches Forum and Update on Father Hardon's Cause

I spent the weekend at the Church Teaches Forum in Louisville, Kentucky.  This year I was too tired to get into any trouble.  (Unlike last year at the same event, when Cardinal Arinze and I had a less than pleasant discussion about the state of the archdiocese of Los Angeles.)  On Friday I missed Bishop Bruskewitz' Mass and his speech at the banquet, which was called "A Resume of Some Contemporary Issues in the Church and Their Solutions."   (I had not been able to make the 28 minute drive to the airport in an hour and fifteen minutes, so I missed my plane in L.A.) My mother-in-law said the speech was great. I would love to have heard it, especially the part about the solutions. My mother-in-law took notes, but I haven't had time to look at them yet. 

On Saturday, there were two speeches in the morning, one from Bishop Finn ("Protecting Human Life -- the Authentic Lay Vocation") and one from Archbishop Raymond Burke ("The Mystery of Human Suffering and Euthanasia.")  Afterwards  was a terrific Mass (as there always is at this event) followed by a nice luncheon.

The homilist at the Saturday morning Mass was Rev. Edmund McCaffrey, who is always terrific.  He does a great job as moderator, too, because he's very funny.  In our house, we know him as Abbott Edmund, because he was the Abbott at Chris' first college, "Belmont Abbey," somewhere in the backwoods of North Carolina.  Chris told me an interesting story concernng the day Abbott Edmund walked into Chris' room just as Chris' roommate was checking out his latest issue of Playboy. Suffice it to say, the rest of the day did not go well for the roommate.

In the afternoon, there were more interesting talks.  Unfortunately, I didn't hear them.  I was dead tired and I went to my room to rest for a little while and ended up sleeping for three hours.  After that, I found my mother-in-law, who told me about the talks I missed over dinner.  For the record, the talks I missed were "The Science and Ethics of Stem Cells and Cloning" by Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk followed by "The Priest: Sentinel & Prophet of the Sanctity of Human Life."  I would love to have heard both of those, but my body said, "Enough already."

For me, the most exciting part of the conference was learning that the Eternal Life apostolate, which is the "actor" in Fr. Hardon's cause, has received permission to take the case forward and in a few weeks the officers for the tribunal will be named. The cause will be handled in the Archdiocese of St. Louis, which means that Archbishop Burke will be in charge of it. Official prayer cards are coming soon. This is all good news.

That's all I have to report because my notes are completely illegible. I was so tired, I kept trailing off at the end of sentences because I couldn't keep up. Therefore, I can tell you that suffering is an invitation to be ... something ... closer to ...something that starts with a "j" and ends in a "l" or an uncrossed "t."

But, as is always the case with this event, the Masses alone were worth the effort it took to get there. And I came home with some good reading material for the next flight. Which, I hate to say, is going to be tomorrow. More on that later.

Comments

[Domenico Bettinelli]

The cause will be handled in the Archdiocese of Louisville, which means that Archbishop Burke will be in charge of it.

Karen,

Is that Louisville or St. Louis? Because if it's Louisville, then I'm pretty sure it won't be Archbishop Burke.

[Karen]

Oops. I fixed it. I always get those Louie places mixed up in my head. It's all "somewhere else" to me.

[Nancy]

So where to next? NYC? LA? NC?