Leading US Catholic think tank The Napa Institute begins its 13th annual conference “What We Need Now” today at the Meritage Hotel in Napa, California, an hour north of San Francisco in the heart of the California wine country.
The four-day conference, attended by the Catholic Herald, features a wide range of meetings, Masses, movies, rosaries, retreats and other liturgies, gourmet meals, tours and other events. The speakers include a USA “Who’s Who” of clerical and lay Catholic leaders including, on Thursday night, former vice president and current presidential candidate Mike Pence. He was raised as a Catholic before becoming an evangelical Christian.
Several of the speakers and attendees appeared in the Catholic Herald’s inaugural “US Catholic Leaders of Today” survey published last year featuring the top 250 most influential US lay Catholics across the worlds of US education, business, finance sports, philanthropy, law, media, politics, non-profit sector and more. The 2023 list will be published in November.
The Napa Institute’s co-chairs are founder Tim Busch and Fr Robert Spitzer S.J., president of both the Magis Center of Reason and Faith the Spitzer Center. The focus of the 2023 conference is “on recovering the presence of Jesus Christ” – and His words, “my peace I give unto you” (Jn 14:27) – at the heart of our daily lives”, say Busch and Fr Spitzer. The conference is designed to be an experience of relaxation and catechesis around a single theme developed over three days, this year’s theme being “what we need now” for Christian renewal in our personal lives, the Church and in wider culture.
“It’s been a difficult time in our society over the last 5 or 10 years where we’ve become increasingly tribal and one of the things Napa Institute is aiming for is trying to bring people together and create friendships,” said Tim Busch in introductory remarks.
Fr Spitzer added: “The tribalism problem is very acute right now, but I think also there is a malaise in the culture that’s not just reflective of the discord that’s out there but also the loss of faith. The loss of Jesus Christ. The loss of a moral compass. We need to find creative ways of getting this back into our culture and we also need to be bringers of peace and sowers of real harmony with those who don’t agree with us, but at the same time we must be valiant in holding on to the truth.”
Fr Spitzer will speak about a new film researching the Shroud of Turin. Other speakers include pro-life champion Helen Alvare, formerly of the United States Catholic Conference and now on the faculty of George Mason University; Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco; Archbishop Timothy Broglio, President of the USCCB; Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield; Bishop Gregory Mansour of the Eparch of Saint Maron of Brooklyn; Father Joseph Fessio S.J., founder of Ignatius Press; Father George Elsbett of the John Paul II Center in Vienna; Curtis Martin, founder and CEO of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS); Alexandra DeSanctis of the Ethics and Public Policy Center; Harvard faculty member Arthur Brooks and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia.
Tim Busch, who will be interviewed during the conference by the Herald’s Jamie McGuire for our new “Profiles in Faith” series,is also the founder of the Busch Firm, a law firm which specialises in estate and tax planning, and the representation of religious organisations. He and his wife, Steph, are involved in many Catholic organisations, including the Magis Institute, and are both long time advocates of Catholic education, having co-founded St. Anne School in Laguna Niguel and JSerra Catholic High School in San Juan Capistrano.
Over 900 attendees are expected for the conference which runs from Wednesday 26th July to Sunday 30th July.
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