SBC Conferences

C. Joseph Doyle, Gary Potter, Dr. Robert Hickson, John Sharpe and Brother André Marie are the confirmed speakers we have so far for our July conference. More speakers are being lined up now. Please stay tuned to this web site for more information.

This year, once again, we are waiving admission costs for interested clergy and religious. Priests, deacons, brothers, sisters, and seminarians — all are welcome for free.

To avail themselves of this offer, clergy and religious must register.

Please encourage any clerics or religious you know to attend. Their presence will be a blessing for our event.

Notice to priests: In addition to the above admission offer, any priest who celebrates the traditional Roman rite and will be at the conference for the whole weekend may be eligible for free room and board for the entire conference. This offer can be extended only to a limited number of priests and will terminate without notice when the number is reached. Interested priests should contact us as soon as possible to make arrangements.

The Dishonoring of a Naval Officer and a Catholic Gentleman, John Sharpe.

In the latest fallout from the malignant SPLC attack against Catholic traditionalists, John Sharpe has been forbidden to speak at Catholic University. The following spot-on commentary comes from Diogenes, the commentator at Catholic World News:

In San Antonio, devout Catholics complained to the archbishop when St. Mary’s University hosted a campaign rally for Senator Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s support for abortion, same-sex marriage, and embryonic stem-cell research are a matter of public record, they pointed out. The archbishop was sympathetic. The university was not. The rally went ahead on schedule. Read the rest of this entry »

Conference speaker, R. Cort Kirkwood, interviewed by Howard Phillips, of the Conservative Caucus. This video is about a half hour.

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Our schedule is not yet near completion, but Mr. Kirkwood’s slot will certainly be on Saturday.

R. Cort Kirkwood is the author of Real Men Ten Courageous Americans to Know And Admire (Cumberland House). He is an award-winning journalist, presently working as managing editor of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He has been writing about American politics and culture for more than twenty years. A graduate of Boston University and Loyola College in Baltimore, he lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

He has also contributed to the traditionalist Catholic fortnightly, The Remnant:

• Mission Impossible? Tom Cruise to Play German Catholic Hero
• What’s Wrong With Rudy Giuliani?

In a recent Ad Rem, Brother André Marie recommended Real Men. We reproduce here the text of that writeup: Read the rest of this entry »

If you are interested in sampling the kind of material our conference offers, and if you are inclined to meaty, manly biography packaged with erudite literary flourish, you will do well to read “Saint Boniface and the Missionary Culture of the Faith,” which we have just posted on the Catholicism.org site.

A wonderful compliment to Mr. Kirkwood’s Real Men.

Conference speaker, Mr. C. Joseph Doyle (bio), is the Executive Director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts. To get an idea of Joe’s aplomb as a Catholic polemicist with a flare at taking on the enemies of the Church, see his excellent article, “Vichy Catholic,” which takes to task the putatively Catholic Boston Globe columnist who “has risen to prominence through his repeated attacks on the Church.”

Please note our “Press Release” section on the site’s sidebar. Our first media advisory is now posted:

• First Press Release: March 4, 2008 (90k PDF)
• First Press Release: March 4, 2008 (74k Word doc)

Thanks to the folks at the ChesterBelloc Mandate, there are some savory morsels of our speaker’s work online. Most of these reflect John’s advocacy of the economic thinking known as distributism.

• Capitalism and Catholic Economics Part I
• Capitalism and Catholic Economics Part II
• Catholic Action
• Liberal Economics vs. Catholic Truth
• Why Money is Sick
• Work and Property

You can also see everything tagged “John Sharpe” on the ChesterBelloc Mandate Blog.

Finally, you can read this 2003 interview with our friend on Zenit’s web site: “Reviving the Church’s Social Doctrine for the 21st Century”

One need not be a strict distributist to see merit in the efforts of Chesterton, Belloc, Fr. McNabb and other great Catholic thinkers to craft an economic system using the social teaching of the popes as their foundation. Sadly, there has been no small amount of acrimony surrounding this issue — with brash accusations of “socialism” and “communism” being leveled at men who are deeply Catholic and adamantly opposed to such ideologies.

Efforts have been made to attempt a reconciliation between distributist theories and the free market economy. Wilhelm Röpke, the Swiss economist who advocated for “economic humanism” (which he also referred to as the “third way”), is one who attempted such a synthesis. Röpke was Protestant, but was influenced by the Catholic thinkers G.K. Chesterton, Hillaire Belloc and Christopher Dawson, in addition to the Protestant, Edmund Burke, one of the fathers of modern political conservatism.

John Zmirak, a Catholic scholar, defends distributism while also recommending Röpke’s synthesis. As that linked article indicates, Zmirak is trying to end the belligerency that has arisen between Catholic defenders of the free market economy and their coreligionists who advocate distributism. Zmirak is both avid reader of all the authors named and wrote an acclaimed book on Röpke.

Worried about the current economic situation and how much worse it may become, many families are cutting back on non-essentials. In these circumstances, some who would  ordinarily consider attending the SBC conference may decide they can’t afford it. We want to assure everyone that we are doing what we can to make it possible for all to attend by keeping our costs to the absolute minimum. Beyond that, we’d like to suggest that the truths of the Catholic Faith, including the social teaching derived from it, are  never a “luxury”. In difficult times they become more important than ever. Learning about them and how they help us live, and weighing issues of the day in their light, is what SBC conferences are about. It’s an added bonus that for the duration of the event you’re able to get together with others who see the things that matter the same way you do.