Conference committee looks to the future


By Michael O’Connell and Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press
Rob Cournoyer, 54, of Barre, attended his first men’s conference in the late-2000s during a time when, he said, he had “strayed pretty far” from the Catholic faith. This past weekend he returned for a 10th time – in a much more positive frame of mind.
“These conferences give me hope and strength to learn the faith,” he said, stopping to look over a vendor’s book selections at the 19th annual Worcester Diocesan Catholic Men’s Conference, held April 6 at Assumption College. 
“I feel like I’m living life the way I’m supposed to now,” he said. “Coming to conferences like this, I like to hear the speakers and other people’s experiences. We all have a story. We all have a journey.”
This year’s conference attracted about 1,000 attendees – a figure roughly comparable with conferences in recent years. It featured six speakers, confessions, networking breaks, time to browse vendor offerings and a late-afternoon Mass celebrated by Bishop McManus.
The speakers covered a wide range of topics. Filmmaker Kevin Dunn kicked off the morning with a talk about physician-assisted suicide. He was followed by Francesco Cesareo, the college’s president and chairman of the U.S. bishops’ National Review Board, discussing the sexual abuse crisis in the Church; radio host Trent Horn on defending our faith; and Father Warren Savage on the sacrament of reconciliation. In the afternoon author Mike Aquilina discussed the value of angels and former professional football player Eric Mahl related his personal story of transformation.
At the closing Mass, Bishop McManus talked about Jesus as the human face of the Father’s mercy, shown in the Gospel reading about him not condemning the woman caught in adultery. (Jn 8:1-11)
Those who brought the woman in wanted to get Jesus to contradict the law, the bishop said. But Jesus said the one without sin could throw the first stone to kill her, and they left, oldest first. 
“As you and I grow older … we realize we must place ourselves in the merciful embrace of God,” Bishop McManus said.
He talked about Pope Francis saying, “If you do not embrace the cross of Christ, you cannot be an authentic disciple,” and about the “ocean of mercy” spreading from Christ’s pierced side to the whole world. 
Eighteen years after the diocese held its first men’s conference, in Holy Name Central Catholic High School, committee co-chair Angelo Guadagno said he’s proud of how the conference has progressed and sustained itself over time. The second conference was held in the Worcester Centrum Centre because it needed more space, and in 2017 it moved to the current venue at Assumption College. Mr. Guadagno said the event attracted its biggest roster of vendors ever this year. He also said the fact that the conference is attracting a broader audience – more students and more attendees from outside of central and eastern Massachusetts – bodes well for the future.
“After all these years, the conference is still filling a need,” Mr. Guadagno said. 
He said the organizing committee is looking for new members to bring the event into its third decade; most committee members have served since the conference’s early days and are looking to transition control to a new group.
“Right now, that’s the most important priority,” Mr. Guadagno said.
Meanwhile, attendees keep coming back, year after year, looking for guidance from speakers and inspiration from fellow attendees.
“We need strong Catholic men to be leaders in our community,” said Joe Mello, 74, a retired police officer from Leominster, attending his ninth men’s conference. “Male spirituality is important to all of us. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.”
Tom Denault, 26, a machinist from Stamford, Vermont, has been to four men’s conferences outside the Worcester Diocese and two here at Assumption College. He said the first conference he attended captivated him with the positive messages the speakers delivered and convinced him to do more in his home parish.
“From the very first one, it started changing my life,” he said. “I started practicing my faith more and teaching RCIA in our parish. Now I keep coming back, wanting more.”
“It just reaffirms my faith,” added Tom Seery, 71, a retired banker from Franklin. “It’s amazing hearing people’s different perspectives on things and just getting together with 1,000 other people who believe the same things you do.”
 

Trent Horn says just ask the right questions

By Michael O’Connell
CFP Correspondent
Years ago, before he became staff apologist for the lay-run apostolate Catholic Answers, Trent Horn saw people trying to defend their Catholic faith the old-fashioned way: by learning and by arguing their points harder.
Today, he adopts a different approach. He doesn’t argue – he asks questions and subtly convinces people to see things a different way.
“We can’t go out there as robots spewing answers,” he said during his talk at the men’s conference. Instead try to understand where the other person is coming from – what he or she believes. Then ask pointed questions that get the person to question the assumptions he or she has made.
“When you ask a question, it takes you out of the hot seat and puts you in the driver’s seat,” he said.
Mr. Horn, author of eight books and host of the weekly radio program “Catholic Answers Live,” illustrated how to do this with personal stories and a look at tactics used by Peter Falk’s Lieutenant Columbo character in 1970s television shows. Columbo, dressed in a rumpled raincoat, came across as a disorganized, dimwitted detective, asking offhanded questions in a polite, seemingly confused manner. The whole time, Columbo listened, learned and eventually ferreted out the clue that sealed the suspect’s fate.
Mr. Horn spoke of doing that not in a deceitful way, but honestly, seeking to discern if the other person is right, and you should change. But it’s a two-way street: If I’m correct, will you believe me, and maybe change your life?
Jesus used the question tactic in Mark 11, when Jewish leaders asked him who gave him authority, Mr. Horn noted. Jesus turned the tables on them and asked them whether John the Baptist’s baptism was of heavenly or human origin. Having conflicted views about John the Baptist, the leaders said they didn’t know. Mr. Horn said Jesus responded with a “metaphorical mic drop moment” by declining to answer their question.  
He himself has used a similar approach. He said when a reporter asked him what is wrong with allowing people to die with dignity, during a show about physician-assisted suicide, he countered with a question. Where should you draw the line on who should get saved – a person threatening to jump off a bridge or a person with a terminal illness? He said the reporter was surprised to get a reasonable answer from him.
How can people put this tactic into practice? 
Mr. Horn said his favorite question to ask atheists is, “What is the best reason for God you’ve ever heard, and what’s wrong with it?”
“You don’t need the right answers,” he said. “You just need the right questions.”

In face of crisis, death, bring hope, speakers say

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press
Be prophets of hope – in the face of death and the crisis in the Church – attendees of last Saturday’s men’s conference were told. 
“We have to put our phones down,” look into people’s eyes, and let them know they’re valuable, said Kevin Dunn, a movie producer who fights against physician-assisted suicide through his film Fatal FLAWS, among other ways. 
“The issue is abandonment,” he said. “Become a prophet of hope.… They can pass these laws (legalizing physician-assisted suicide) throughout the world, but no one will reach for them” if they feel people care about them.
Helping people deal with the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church is “another area where we need to be prophets of hope, because we know people are questioning, ‘Is God really here with us?’” said Francesco Cesareo, president of Assumption College and chairman of the National Review Board, which the U.S. bishops established in 2002 to help them prevent sexual abuse of minors by church workers. 
“But we have to do it in a way where we are partnering with the clergy, not working against the clergy,” President Cesareo continued.  “We need to enter the conversation in order to affect conversions. 
“We start with prayer. We start with penance. But that’s no longer enough. We have to take hold of our baptismal call to be priest, prophet and king.” Laity need to be recognized as co-responsible for the Church’s being and action. They should not say: “It’s not my problem. You created the mess; you clean up the mess.”
“If we truly love the Church we have to act now … so that we don’t see a crisis of faith,” President Cesareo said, distinguishing between the present crisis in the Church and a crisis of faith. “Our faith must always be centered on Jesus Christ” – not an individual priest, bishop or pope.
He said the crisis today is different than in 2002, when many reports of past sexual abuse by clergy were publicized. Today it’s about the failure of leadership, the silence that allowed abuse to continue, he said.
“The child has to be at the center,” he said. “And the focus was on the institution. … ‘How do I maintain my position … power … authority?’ … The reform that’s needed is a personal conversion that will lead to a cultural conversion” in the Church’s leadership, a renewed openness to transparency.
President Cesareo told listeners they can help move the Church toward the healing, renewal and reform they have a co-responsibility for, in the following ways.
They can tell those whose faith has been challenged by the crisis how the Church has addressed sexual abuse by helping victims, training workers to make environments safe and challenging bishops to be accountable. 
Another way is to provide opportunities for discussion and “acknowledge the problem … the coverup … the shared sense of shame and mistrust,” he said. It’s necessary to meet people where they are in responding to this crisis; “we cannot dismiss their woundedness.” 
Meeting with students, he found “they love their faith, they love their Church” but don’t know how to help. He called listeners to be prophets of hope for young people facing this crisis. 
Third, President Cesareo said, “We have to call for both justice and mercy.” Justice is rehabilitative, not retributive, he said.
“To forgive doesn’t mean to forget; if we forget, we’re going to repeat the same mistakes,” he cautioned.
President Cesareo’s fourth suggestion was: “Don’t be afraid to share your thoughts and ideas … a dialog with the clergy … (and) your sons and daughters. It’s only in dialog that we are able to repair this damage. …
“Now is the time to rededicate ourselves to the body of Christ,” which includes sheep and goats, who are to be judged by God, not us, he said. “It calls for greater compassion” and renewal of heart, so the Church can be a beacon of hope.
Mr. Dunn talked about being prophets of hope in the face of physician-assisted suicide and abortion.
“Thou shalt not kill; how plain is that?” he asked. But, he said, people manipulate words, speaking of compassion and choice when talking about physician-assisted suicide, which some in Massachusetts are trying again to legalize. 
People ask for doctors’ help in taking their lives out of fear of future pain, of losing autonomy and of being a burden, he said.
He showed excerpts from Fatal FLAWS, including one of a handicapped young woman whose mother was pushed to have her killed when she was sick. Her mother – a prophet of hope – refused, and the girl got better and participated in her sister’s wedding.
“Put up your hand if your life has been touched by someone with special needs,” Mr. Dunn told listeners. “We’re all one step away from being disabled.”
God doesn’t want neutral people, he said, and talked about standing for life by being the power of presence in the lives of others, such as the homeless, the disabled and the elderly.
Mr. Dunn also illustrated being a prophet of hope with the following story. When he met the woman he later married, she told him she’d given a baby up for adoption. They kept this fact to themselves, but prayed for her son. Then one day she revealed it to a friend, who told about meeting the daughter she gave up for adoption. 
“Her friend’s daughter and my wife’s son were adopted into the same home,” Mr. Dunn marveled.
“What if Mary had chosen the other route?” he asked, apparently referring to abortion. Instead, their children have a new brother – because of prophets of hope who helped his wife choose life.

'I didn't want to look like the American Dream anymore...'

By Michael O’Connell
CFP Correspondent
Back when he was 22, Eric Mahl felt like he was living out his dream. He was a successful football player – emerging from a small Ohio town to play major college football and getting signed by the NFL’s Cleveland Browns.
But something was missing. Rather than stick with it and try to make it in professional football, Mr. Mahl left and went on a spiritual journey.
“I looked a lot like the American Dream,” he said, closing out the afternoon at the 19th Worcester Diocesan Catholic Men’s Conference. “The house, the money – and I was so empty. I didn’t want to look like the American Dream anymore; I wanted to look like Jesus.”
Mr. Mahl ditched the shoulder pads and helmet.
“I had the gift of just divesting myself of everything outside of the clothes on my back and the Bible in my hand,” he said. “I spent three years of my life lost in the desert. … I fell in love with Jesus of Nazareth.” 
Mr. Mahl also lived in homeless shelters and on the streets of Cleveland and New York. In one shelter, a man threatened to kill him if he didn’t stop talking about Jesus’ love.
Mr. Mahl saw three options – show aggression and anger, ignore him or ask him, ‘Who are you? What’s your name? Can I get to know you?’” 
He chose the third option, listening and disarming the man. 
“What are you doing here?” the man asked.
Mr. Mahl’s response: “I love you, brother.” 
He said that man, who was going to kill him, became one of his best friends.
He felt like Jesus was reaching out to him through that man, challenging him to prove that he loved him.
“The world and the Church is saying ‘prove it,’” Mr. Mahl said. “Don’t just go to the conference and learn the stuff. Encounter the living Jesus. Reveal that you know him.”
Now Mr. Mahl serves as a part of the formation team of the Marian Missionaries of Divine Mercy in Stockbridge.
Two other mid-day speakers focused their talks on the role of angels in the lives of major figures in the Scripture, and the sacrament of reconciliation.
Mike Aquilina, author or edotor of more than 40 books on Catholic history, doctrine and devotion, related how angels act as close companions, walking with people spiritually and communicating important information throughout the Bible. An angel appears in Genesis, offering Hagar comfort, consolation, encouragement and a glimpse of a better future. And from there, angels keep appearing: in judgment of Sodom; staying the hand of Abraham as he was about to kill son Isaac and many other occasions.
“Angels appear to be God’s way of communicating,” Mr. Aquilina said. “The angels in the Old Testament have lively conversations with people. They give instructions. They answer questions. They may be spiritual, but there’s nothing evanescent about them. There’s nothing ‘out there’ about them. They’re discernible, personal and certainly personable, able to engage kings and shepherds, back and forth.”
Father Warren Savage, a priest from the Diocese of Springfield, told the crowd that “good people” need regular confession to overcome self-deception and to rediscover the deep truth that we all are sinners in need of God’s tender mercy and forgiveness.
“My job is simply to let you know one of the greatest gifts our Church has is the sacrament of reconciliation,” Father Savage said. “We have this wonderful sanctuary of mercy and love where you actually meet God face to face.” God says: “No matter what you do I love you, and I’m going to help you to be who I created you to be. I will love you enough that you will always walk with me and walk with one another.”