Respect Life Conference stirs the ‘catholic heart’More than 300 respect life advocates – from ages 15 and younger to 85 and older – gathered for the event hosted by the Orlando Diocese and held at the Lake Mary Marriott Conference Center Oct. 16-18. 
JEAN GONZALEZ | FC Posted: 10.20.09 LAKE MARY | Optimism, hope, healing and education became the core values offered at the annual Florida Respect Life Conference and participants were inspired to “awaken in every body a catholic heart for life.” “By ‘catholic’ we mean ‘universal,’” said Paulist Father Nieli, a Catholic evangelist and missionary who offered Saturday’s first keynote address. More than 300 respect life advocates – from ages 15 and younger to 85 and older – gathered for the event hosted by the Orlando Diocese and held at the Lake Mary Marriott Conference Center Oct. 16-18. It began with a youth night on Friday and ended with a White Mass in honor of the feast of St. Luke, and included workshops that focused on a variety of issues – health care; human sexuality; solidarity with those who are oppressed, vulnerable or underserved and more – all of which were connected to Catholic social teaching. Keynoters also spoke on various subjects, but returned to the conference’s theme of “The Love that Satisfies.” Father Nieli, who will celebrate 37 years of priestly service in 2010, is founding director of the Center for Spiritual Development for the New York Archdiocese, and focused on evangelization, which he described as “helping people fall in love with Jesus Christ.” “We are on an eve of catholic awakening in this country,” he said. “And we are called to be bridge builders in America and we are sorely needed.” Since this is the Year for Priests, Father Nieli asked participants to recall the inspiration a priest might have played in his or her life as they evangelize the message of life to others. In his own life, Father Nieli shared the example of three priests who inspired him. First, St. John Vianney, the patron of the Year for Priests. As the Curé of Ars relied on the Holy Spirit, and so must Catholics in their daily lives, Father Nieli said. Pope John Paul II serves as another priestly model for Father Nieli because the late pope “embodies who we are as a Catholic Church.” The late pope’s dedication to solidarity and social justice reminds Catholics that the “goal of the Catholic Church is to make sure no one is marginalized,” Father Nieli said. Finally, he spoke of the third priest, Father Benedict Groeschel of the Franciscan Friars of Renewal. The internationally renowned evangelist has served as Father Nieli’s spiritual rock since 1974 when they met at a contemplative retreat Father Nieli attended. Father Nieli, who worked in an urban Memphis, Tenn., parish with the underprivileged, said he is constantly inspired by the wit, wisdom and example of Father Groeschel. Father Nieli described the friar as “our country’s finest evangelist, bar none,” and said he was an advocate for life at every opportunity, including when he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and when he was arrested in front of an abortion clinic in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. Father Nieli said Father Groeschel, who celebrated 50 years of priestly service Oct. 18, is an “America’s North Star” within the pro-life movement. Just as the friar embraced the message of life at all times, so should every Catholic Christian, Father Nieli said. “We have to be the leaven in the dough,” he said. “It is time for us to bind the nation’s wounds. Let us be bridge builders. Let as work as one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all, from conception to natural death.” Damon Owens offered an address during the youth night, a workshop and a keynote during the conference. Owens, founder of Joy-Filled Marriage NJ, a nonprofit organization in New Jersey that produces training, resources and support for engaged and married couples, spoke about how every person must encounter a “radical remembering” to recognize what it truly means to find a “love that satisfies,” which ultimately leads everyone to understand the love of God. In talking with the 200 youths gathered Friday night, Owens said they are the “key to hope” for the Catholic faithful to create the conversion within our society so that “every body” might understand the love of God. “When you are touched by God, you see things differently,” Owens said. “We want to wake up in you what we could wake up within our own generation.” With a focus on human sexuality, Owens asked the group the question: “What does it mean to be a woman of God and a man of God?” He said God created sexuality and that the body reveals something about God and something about us. And sometimes to understand answers to questions about being a man and woman of God, Catholics need to rethink everything they know about love, personhood, manhood and womanhood. “The truth about sexuality is not about rules. It’s about remembering and having an encounter of who you are,” Owens said. “We have an amnesia and we don’t have a memory of who we are and of why every life is precious.” Owens encouraged the young people to wake up and seek the answers to those questions. It was a challenge that continued in Owens’ other addresses. In his keynote, Owens reiterated how people’s greatest challenge is the loss of identity. Owens said it is important to continue to listen to what God is saying, and to realize sometimes it is said in whispers. He said God created humans to have that “longing for love.” “That’s why when we are in the process of conversion, we need to put our ears to the ground to hear God; to kneel in front of the Blessed Sacrament and listen,” said the husband and father of seven daughters. “The process of conversion is so integral to how God radically respects our freedom. ... But our freedom is not the freedom to merely do as we wish. It is the taking away of impediments so that we may better know God and encounter the love that satisfies. “That idea of freedom is stripped by the secular society,” he continued. “There is a freedom that exists, but it does not satisfy. With God, love and freedom are things that are realized through whispers, meditations and are received. They cannot be grasped and clutched. The posture to seek those things is on our knees in front of the Blessed Sacrament.”
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