ORLANDO, February 11, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Rick Santorum led an all-star cast at the 2014 Legatus Summit in Orlando, Florida this weekend. Some 450 top Catholic business owners heard from Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gómez, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, football coach Lou Holtz and the Catholic League’s Dr. William Donohue and many more.
While some of the talks were light and entertaining, especially that of comedian and motivational speaker Ross Shafer, there was much serious discussion of the state of America and appeals for the Legatus members to use their faith and resources to help set things right.
The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue noted that the attack on civil liberties in America is worse than he has ever seen before in his lifetime. Pointing to the HHS mandate and the imposition of homosexual ‘marriage’, he said, the “attack is from militant secularism.”
Senator Rick Santorum expressed it plainly when he said, “America is broken,” adding that “we have to take responsibility for that. It was our watch.” Santorum recounted that his own journey began when he was in Congress in 1995 when he championed the partial-birth abortion ban. Before that time he had told his staff he would never mention abortion, but once he was informed that the horrific partial birth abortion procedure was legal in America he was transformed.
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For years in both Congress and Senate, Santorum pushed unsuccessfully for the ban. Despite all the political losses on the matter via vetoes from President Bill Clinton, there was a victory nevertheless. The attitude of America changed with heavy media coverage of partial birth abortion. God, said Santorum, will bless even our failures.
“America is broken because we’re afraid to fight,” he said. We must be committed, be all in, we must know what is on the line, “souls, eternal souls,” he said. “We don’t live in a time in America when we can afford to stop fighting.”
While presenting the solution to the current crisis, speaker and author Matthew Kelly also presented a sobering picture as he noted that since it took 50 to 100 years to get America into the mess we’re in, we need to plan for and understand that it will take us generations to heal. The solution however is clear – holiness. “The biggest lie we tell ourselves,” he said, “is that holiness is not possible for me.” That he said leads to acceptance of mediocrity. Holiness is possible, he stressed, beginning with one repeatable ‘holy moment’ at a time.
The summit attendees were treated to a live show of The Catholic View for Women, an EWTN production starring hosts Teresa Tomeo, Janet Morana and Astrid Bennett Gutierrez. On the show, where, like the secular show ‘The View’, the hosts ‘dish’ on various topics, Tomeo, Morana and Gutierrez took on the heated issue of contraception. With facts, personal testimony and humour the show hosts were able to present the anti-life reality of contraception, and its harm to the family and to women specifically.
The Legatus Summit also heard from Michael Coren, Stephen Ray, Curtis Martin, and many more.