(LifeSiteNews) — The retired scholar who jokingly proposed the establishment of a modern Catholics recovery conference will be speaking at one: this year’s Rome Life Forum in Exile in October.
Professor Janet Smith amused many readers in March when she commented on a conference for Catholics who regret their involvement in traditionalist communities by proposing a conference that Catholics need to recover from the jettisoning of tradition.
“(T)he numbers interested may be huge; it will require renting out sports arenas in multiple metro areas to accommodate a mere fraction of the wounded,” she wrote. “Millions have left the Church since the 60s, and millions of those who remain are exceedingly unhappy with much of what is happening in the Church. Many of those who left claim, ‘I didn’t leave the Church; the Church left me.’ Hence, a good title for the conference would be: ‘The Church Left Us.’”
Professor Smith suggested a variety of therapies, including tossing copies of the National Catholic Reporter into a fire pit, to soothe Catholics seeking a cure at her proposed conference.
Happily, there really is a conference dedicated to the wounds of those Catholics hurt by the Church’s decline, albeit on a smaller scale than the professor envisioned: the Rome Life Forum in Exile to be held in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 17-18. Its theme is not “The Church Left Us,” but “Recovering from Modernism” and Dr. Smith herself will be addressing participants.
READ: Candace Owens’ husband George Farmer to speak at LifeSite’s Rome Life Forum
Smith is an ideal resource not only for Catholics harmed by post-Vatican II Catholicism but for pro-life activists as well. Recently retired from the Father McGivney Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Smith is the author of Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later and A Right to Privacy. Her book Self-Gift contains her previously published essays on Humanae Vitae and the thought of John Paul II.
In addition, Smith edited Why Humanae Vitae is Right: A Reader; Life Issues, Medical Choices (with Christopher Kaczor); Living the Truth in Love: Pastoral Approaches to Same-Sex Attractions (with R. Paul Check); and Why Humanae Vitae is Still Right, a reader with 21 essays by various authors.
Other speakers at this year’s Rome Life Forum in Exile will include Bishop Joseph Strickland; George Farmer, the CEO of his wife Candace Owens’ “Candace”podcast; LifeSiteNews Editor-in-Chief John-Henry Westen; author and Mariologist Xavier Reyes-Ayral; and Father Michael Rodriguez, an El Paso priest who celebrates the Traditional Latin Mass.
READ: Bishop Strickland to give keynote speech at this year’s Rome Life Forum
There will also be a host of like-minded people. Attendees are expected to take part fully in the discussions, particularly in the question-and-answer session. The Rome Life Forum attracts Catholics from all over the world, and everyone has a unique perspective to share. Doing what can humanly be done to steer back on course is not the work of only a few but of as many of the faithful as are called to do it.
The Rome Life Forum in Exile (that is, outside the Eternal City) will be held in the InterContinental Kansas City at the Plaza hotel. To buy tickets and for more information about the Rome Life Forum, please visit our Rome Life Forum page here.
The event is presented by LifeSiteNews and sponsored by UbeCube , The Fatima Center, the Coalition for Canceled Priests, and the author of Catholic Voting and Mortal Sin.