The speaking program included three EWTN-TV hosts from a variety of backgrounds.
Msgr. Swetland, who hosts a TV program aimed at college students, spoke about the importance of confession. To become holy, he said, we need to “be totally transparent,” to confess our sins and faults and “allow God to find us.”
“That begins in the sacrament of confession,” he said. “Standing before God being totally transparent, not holding anything back, admitting ‘Here I am with all my faults.’ What we discover is just how much God loves us.”
While in Worcester last weekend, Father Pacwa, a Scripture scholar, made a special presentation at St. John’s Parish in the city. At the men’s conference he discussed St. Paul’s Theology of the Cross.
Discussing St. Paul’s writings about the “centrality” of the cross to the Catholic faith, Father Pacwa noted how people of other faiths – Mormons, Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses – do not believe in the crucifixion. This, he said, “distorts Christ” and “distorts heaven.”
“When they distort Christ, they no longer look forward to a heaven where they will be with God and see the Lord face to face,” Father Pacwa said. “All three of them look for a heaven basically just as ‘what I experience – that the good times I experience on earth will continue forever.’”
Father Pacwa also said if we see Christ as being “accursed” – by his death on the Cross – we also could see taking the Body and Blood as an opportunity to “inoculate” ourselves from sin the way people did from a disease like polio.
“We should think about Christ in the same way,” Father Pacwa said. “Not only does he become accused by hanging on the tree; by dying on the tree he becomes a dead curse, and if we have faith in his death to redeem us from the curse of the law, this faith inoculates us from the life of sin – sin that controls our lives.”
Mr. Ahlquist talked about G..K. Chesterton’s view of what’s wrong with the world – big government, big business, feminism and public education, which undermine the family. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the famed writer’s book “What’s Wrong with the World?”
Chesterton favored small, family-owned businesses and local government, Mr. Ahlquist said; otherwise no one is accountable and everyone becomes dependent on the system.
Unlike men, women can be mothers, the most important role in society, Mr. Ahlquist said, to applause. Women have strength on the spot, called industry, and men have strength in reserve, called laziness, so women are in charge of the household, the most important place, he said. Men learn one skill and go out to use it to provide for their families. When women leave the home, big government is happy because it can replace the family, and big business is happy because it can get cheap labor, he said.
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Chesterton called education truth in the state of transmission, and said children should be taught the oldest ideas, Mr. Ahlquist said. He said most people are educated wrongly. Specialists, not well-rounded individuals, are created. The only ones who seem to have nothing to do with children’s education is the parents. He asked how it can be more important to teach a child to avoid a disease than to teach him to value life.
“You are the problem,” Mr. Ahlquist told listeners. “You are also the solution.” He urged them to start small businesses, get involved in local government and home-school their children, send them to good Catholic schools or get the public schools to read Chesterton.
“If we want women to start acting like women, men have to start acting like men,” he said, and spoke of chivalry and devotion to Mary.
Chesterton was a prophet and there’s a good case to be made he’s a saint, Mr. Ahlquist said.
Printed with permission from The Catholic Free Press, newspaper from the Diocese of Worcester, Mass.