Saturday was a great day. First I went to the Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy conference at Nassau Community College. The two day conference had about 40 speakers and all the presentations were based on contributions to a major encyclopedia that will be published in about 2 years. The conference took place all day on Friday so Saturday was just a half-day, but featured some great speakers. I was able to hear Bill Donohue of the Catholic League who was, as expected, funny, absolutely right on in his analysis, and feisty. He talked about the difficulty in defending the Church from wrongdoing while many in the Church were doing so much wrong. He even said he would never be the Church’s waterboy meaning that he will never defend the bishops or priests involved in molesting children or covering it up. Unfortunately, his talk was only scheduled for 30 minutes with no time for a Q/A session. I also heard talks by Dr. Thomas Woods (The American Progressive Era) and Dr. Thomas Drolesky (Americanism Within the Catholic Church), both traditional Catholics whom I have heard before. Woods talked about the progressive era rejecting any form of dogmatic absolutism in any area of life, although many Catholics were able to take the best of the progressive ideas and apply Catholic thought to them. Drolesky, as inspiring as ever, spoke about the dangerous trend in American history, of Catholics, even some bishops, rejecting the teachings of Rome. I also heard Father Edward Krause from Gannon University talk about Social Darwinism. He spoke to me at lunch and I realized he was the host of EWTN’s Becoming Catholic, which I have not seen but will have to check out. Monsignor George A. Kelly from St. John’s University also spoke and was funny and depressing at the same time. I did not realize when I first saw the conference program that he was the author of the important book The Battle for the American Church (Revisited) . Listening to him talk of the ideological battles of the 60’s and 70’s was heart breaking, but his wonderful humor helped. Walking slowly to the podium with his cane, he said “I am so excited by that introduction I can hardly wait to hear what I have to say”. He then opened his talk with the best opening line of any I have heard: “Some time after Vatican II, the Church went to hell”. The final address was by Bishop William Murphy on “Rerum Novarum Today”. His idea was that just as the idea of a Just Wage (taking into account a person’s needs) replaced the old simple notions of wages (agreed upon value), today the international trade in the global economy should take into account the needs of the poor and the developing nations rather than simply on profit. Sounds good to me. He greeted people individually and spoke to people before he gave his presentation but unfortunately I did not get a chance to talk with him. I would have liked to thank him for making the traditional latin mass a weekly thing, even if I don’t go to it every Sunday. There were other good speakers I haven’t mentioned but the whole day was interesting, orthodox, and stimulating. I don’t take notes at these types of things so I hope what I have written is accurate. The food was good also, which is always a plus with me.
After the conference ended, I went home and was able to play with 2 of my nieces, age 1 and 3 who were visiting. Playing with blocks, the online Blues Clues safety game, and horseyback rides with 2 kids climbing on you is better than even the best academic conference any day.