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Hope this is the right section of CAF for this thread.
Ten years ago when my husband and I were still evangelical Protestant, we started studying the Catholic Church. Originally we just wanted to understand what the Church taught, but eventually, we became convicted by the Holy Spirit that the Catholic Church is the True Church of Jesus Christ, and we converted.
Something that really helped us to get to the place where we converted was the Catholic Family Conferences. We attended several of these back in the early 2000s, and heard a plethora of wonderful Catholic speakers, including Tim Staples, David Currie, and Scott and Kimberly Hahn.
We also heard a lot of excellent local priests and Chicago-area priests.
We were able to attend Mass celebrated by our awesome bishop.
We heard some beautiful music (and some nice contemporary music, too!).
We enjoyed precious times of adoring the Lord Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament with other Catholics.
And we met a lot of really on-fire Catholics, many of whom are still our friends. Lots of good discussions over meals and in the hotel lobbies.
We were also able to get our grown children to attend a few of the sessions, and they really enjoyed them. Our older daughter ended up converting, too.
I think these were highly effective in helping cradle Catholics to wake up about their faith, in helping fallen-away Catholics to come back to their faith, and in helping non-Catholics to convert to the Catholic faith.
So whatever happened to these great Catholic family conferences? It seemed like they were all the rage all over the country for a few years, and now, they’re gone! We still see the occasional men’s conference. I never see a ladies conference. And family conferences–gone. Why?
Ten years ago when my husband and I were still evangelical Protestant, we started studying the Catholic Church. Originally we just wanted to understand what the Church taught, but eventually, we became convicted by the Holy Spirit that the Catholic Church is the True Church of Jesus Christ, and we converted.
Something that really helped us to get to the place where we converted was the Catholic Family Conferences. We attended several of these back in the early 2000s, and heard a plethora of wonderful Catholic speakers, including Tim Staples, David Currie, and Scott and Kimberly Hahn.
We also heard a lot of excellent local priests and Chicago-area priests.
We were able to attend Mass celebrated by our awesome bishop.
We heard some beautiful music (and some nice contemporary music, too!).
We enjoyed precious times of adoring the Lord Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament with other Catholics.
And we met a lot of really on-fire Catholics, many of whom are still our friends. Lots of good discussions over meals and in the hotel lobbies.
We were also able to get our grown children to attend a few of the sessions, and they really enjoyed them. Our older daughter ended up converting, too.
I think these were highly effective in helping cradle Catholics to wake up about their faith, in helping fallen-away Catholics to come back to their faith, and in helping non-Catholics to convert to the Catholic faith.
So whatever happened to these great Catholic family conferences? It seemed like they were all the rage all over the country for a few years, and now, they’re gone! We still see the occasional men’s conference. I never see a ladies conference. And family conferences–gone. Why?