Jamie MacGuire encounters presidential candidate Mike Pence and talks to Tim Busch about lay Catholic leadership today
This week’s Napa Institute conference on the West Coast is the annual pilgrimage gathering of business and spiritual leaders of the US Catholic church, along with a small caravan of media, education leaders, entrepreneurs, attorneys, religious and bible groups, priests, philanthropists, nonprofit executives and Catholic influentials.
What began in 2011 as a mini Sun Valley-style conference for the good and great of conservative leaning Catholics has grown from 130 attendees to over 800 delegates (tickets at $2800) this week, including Republican presidential candidate Mike Pence, lagging some distance behind his former boss Donald Trump in the 2024 White House race.
It is my debut visit and divine providence happily intervened at JFK Airport in New York when I ran into a quartet of Franciscan Friars of the Renewal heading to the conference with me. They were amused to learn that over half a century ago I had been a house prefect to their former Superior, Fr Bernard Murphy (then known as John) at Portsmouth Abbey School in Rhode Island. We had a catch up on him, now ministering in England, and their order’s continuing growth, which set the tone for a cheerful conference under the theme “What We Need Now,”.
The event takes place at Napa Institute’s founder Tim Busch’s Meritage Resort and Spa in Napa; I am staying 20 minutes down the road at the Westin and ferrying copies of the Herald to the main conference every morning.
Busch is the founder of the Busch Firm, which specializes in estate and tax planning and the legal representation of religious organizations. He is the CEO of the Pacific Hospitality Group, in Orange County, which operates twelve luxury hotels throughout the United States.
His co-director, Fr Robert Spitzer SJ, is a brilliant scientist, theologian and former university president. Now completely blind from a degenerative disease, he still writes several books a year and holds his Napa audience in thrall with his polymath ebullience.
Old friends encountered early at Napa include Mgr Peter Vaccari of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, Jack Fowler of American Philanthropic and Kathryn Jean Lopez of the National Review Institute. I also had reunions with Fr Joseph Fessio SJ, founder of the Ignatius Press, and Fr Roger Landry, Catholic chaplain at Columbia University.
But at dinner on our first night, after a packed opening Mass in the “Cave,” I made any number of new friends too: several young missionaries from FOCUS, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students; Ashley Plaeger of Passages, which connects Catholic youngsters to pilgrimages to the Holy Land; and Samantha Kelley, president of Fierce Athletes, a former soccer and rowing champ, who evangelizes about women in sports.
On Thursday the conference opened with a presentation by Fr George Elsbett, director of the John Paul II Center in Vienna, on 10 Principles of Evangelization. Ferdinand Habsburg (who would be Emperor, had things been different) volunteers there when not pursuing his first love as a Formula 1 race car driver; I reviewed his Uncle Eduard’s spiritual memoir in June. Ester Munt-Brooks spoke on anchoring the soul in difficult periods, and there followed a rousing call to action by FOCUS founder Curtis Martin, now actively evangelizing on over 200 campuses, followed by a profoundly moving explication of the Letter of Peter by the Augustine Institute’s Tim Gray.
At lunch I was entertained by Dallas-based podcasters “The BeatiDudes” (yes, really), and the conference kicked into high gear that afternoon with the appearance of Mike Pence, who recounted his Catholic boyhood and the difficult decision to break with Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. He also reemphasized his strong pro-life credentials and explained the political reasoning behind his somewhat controversial policy plank of pushing for a prohibition of abortion over 15 weeks.
In terms of political star power, Pence’s speech has been the highlight to date. The presidential candidate, who has around 5% Republican support, said he was dedicated to fighting harder to limit “abortion access”. His speech was peppered with references to Scripture and he implored delegates to not be afraid of supporting Conservative causes.
As the LA Times noted, “religious conservatives such as the attendees of the Napa Institute conference are a key part of the GOP electorate, and Pence, a devout evangelical Christian, needs their support if he is to have any hope of becoming the next president.” Pence was raised as a Catholic: “What the world needs today is men and women of deep conviction and faith who will boldly live out their faith in the public square,” he said.
Pence’s proposal to pass a national law forbidding abortions after 15 weeks is controversial. Pro-abortion voters of course denounce any limits on abortion access. Pro-life voters think it doesn’t go nearly far enough and advocate an outright ban, as in Oklahoma, or a so-called “heartbeat” law, meaning no abortions once a beating heart can be detected, as in Texas, where such a law is said to have saved 50,000 innocent lives in the past year.
Pence takes a let’s-not-make-the-perfect-the-enemy-of-the-good approach, reasoning that once a politically possible 15-week abortion ban is passed, debate can continue on how much further access to abortion can be restricted. On the other side, of course, abortion-rights proponents are trying to legislate expansive abortion-rights bills at both the state and national levels. Pence believes this struggle will continue for at least another 50 years.
On Thursday evening, there was a moving Mass celebrated in the Syriac Rite (including Aramaic, the language of Jesus) by Iraqi Bishop Bashar Warda and Bishop Gregory John Mansour of the Eparchy of St Maroney of Brooklyn, followed by a dinner in memory of Pope Benedict XVI.
On Friday afternoon, Tim Busch welcomed the Herald to sit with him at the Bistro in his Meritage Resort. After bidding goodbye to delegate friends from the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC, the conference was starting to wind down a little with some delegates heading off to enjoy downtown Napa. The morning was highlighted by author Arthur Brooks, Helen Alvarre, and Catholic Vote speaking.
Busch is modest about the rapid growth of the Institute, started in 2011, attributing it all to “grace”. His personal faith journey is interesting as it highlights how he was inspired by another successful Catholic business leader to take an entrepreneurial approach to his faith.
“I went to a parochial school, and one day one of the nuns suggested it would be a good idea if we went to Mass. So I did and in time became a daily communicant. Later, in college, I never lost my faith but did fall away somewhat from practising. Then I went into business, and in my 30s joined Legatus (the organization for Catholic CEOs founded by Domino’s Pizza owner Tom Monahan), and that proved decisive. I returned to daily Mass and never looked back, and today it remains a tremendous anchor in my life. I recommend it highly to anyone searching for God and spiritual fulfillment.”
A founder of JSerra elementary school in Orange County, California, and the endower of the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America, Busch has led a charmed life in business but gives all credit to God – and to his wife, Steph.
He may credit God and a happy marriage but Busch also works hard at being one of America’s most successful Catholic networkers. He was one of the first names to be shortlisted for inclusion in the Herald‘s inaugural survey of the top 250 US Catholic Leaders of Today, published last October.
This week he has written columns for National Review calling for religious courage and the Wall Street Journal urging the Vatican to make its ever murky finances more transparent. He has also launched a series of pilgrimages to the Holy Land, England, Paris and Rome for 2023-5 and in October will host a New York conference on “‘Principled Entrepreneurship” including a Eucharistic Procession across midtown Manhattan from Saint Patrick’s Cathedral with Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
Since we are in Napa, it’s not surprising that food and good Californian wine feature as much as spiritual nourishment. Dinners at Napa feed up to 800 people on The Lawn (in reality an Astroturf-like synthetic rug). The service is buffet style, and attendees are free to sit where they like. However, if a table has empty chairs one is always warmly welcomed to join. Each evening’s menu has a theme “The Fruits of Napa,” “Food from the Holy Land,” and – my favourite to date – “In honour of Pope Benedict”. Alas, I forgot to pack my lederhosen but at least we were spared a pizza with Coca Cola (no wine) for the Pence dinner in homage to the diet of Trump.
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