Director of the Midwest Catholic Family Conference is already planning for 2025

Kathleen Timmermeyer gave herself one day of rest after this year’s Midwest Catholic Family Conference. She’s already planning for the annual conference’s milestone 25th event on the first weekend in August of 2025.

Timmermeyer, the conference director, is considering a new ticketing program because registration for an event that lasts three days with many options can become complicated.

“There are lots of questions we ask, and we have a purpose for every question, so that’s why not every ticketing program works,” she said a few days after the final blessing for the 24th annual conference took place at Century II in Wichita.

“Yesterday I laid low, but, you know, God has a definite plan,” she said explaining that last year she was still working and only had one day of rest between the end of the conference and her return to her job.

For that, and other reasons, she left her job in May and as a result was able to take on some other pro-life duties, in addition to maintaining her role as conference director. She said it must have been part of God’s plan.

“I’m sitting here going, God, you are just amazing how you coordinated all of this! I’m sitting here and I’ve got the time, and sure, summer was nuts … but now I have time to sit here and help plan.”

Although all of the attendance numbers have not yet been tabulated, Timmermeyer estimated that about 3,000 took part in this year’s conference Aug. 2-4, the most since the Covid pandemic.

She said in addition to receiving good feedback about the speakers, she heard many good remarks about the vendors. “We had the largest number of vendors we’ve had in many years.”

Timmermeyer credited Vendor Chairs Ben and Audra Relph for the uptick.

“Ben does a very good job getting a variety of vendors,” she said. “I’ve not heard this in a number of years, but everybody noticed a lot of traffic in the vendor area.”

The conference’s steering committee will get a month-long breather, she said, and will meet in September to begin planning for 2025. “We’ve already started talking about who we could bring in.”

Speaker plans for 2025

Timmermeyer, who has also been the unofficial archivist for the conference, said she is planning to review old programs for speaker ideas.

After a quarter of a century and the maturation of the internet, Timmermeyer believes the conference still has a role in furthering the faith. She said she understands that today there are many Catholic podcasts and websites but that the conference offers an opportunity to meet new people and build relationships. “I’m a west-sider and there are certain people from the east side I don’t see except for at the conference. It’s like a reunion.”

Among the speakers over the weekend were Fr. Mitch Pacwa, Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, Jimmy Akin, and Fr. Dennis McManus.

Fr. Dennis McManus

One of Fr. Dennis McManus’ topics was “Understanding Jesus’ Conversions.” The professor, who taught for over 40 years, asked those attending: “Isn’t every conversation with Jesus a prayer?”

Our Lord is patient, he said. “You can tell him anything in prayer.”

Jesus can see into the “shadow” side of our hearts, the Jesuit said, “all of those things that are keeping us from loving him.”

He discussed the story of the rich young man who asks Jesus: “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”

He went away sad

Looking into the heart of the young man, Fr. McManus said, he saw that he was possessed by his possessions. Jesus tells him to be perfect he should sell all he has, give to the poor to build up treasure in heaven, and follow Jesus. He walked away sad because he had many possessions.

“That’s a conversation you won’t forget,” Fr. McManus said. “He doesn’t say anything to the Lord. Jesus does that over and over in the Gospels.”

Jesus has insight no one else had, he said. Referring to the story about the woman caught in adultery, he stops the stoning of the woman by simply beginning to write in the dirt. “The accusers are accused,” Fr. McManus said.

Jesus will help everyone if they open their hearts to him, he said. “Never be afraid to open your heart to Christ. Open your wounds to him that he might heal you.”

Fr. Mitch Pacwa

Fr. Mitch Pacwa, the host of several EWTN programs, made three presentations.

Saturday morning his topic was “Our Paganizing Culture is Enslaving People Again,” during which he explained how the culture’s “sexual gluttony” is in part the reason for an unprecedented number of people enslaved today.

Over a period of 250 years, 12 million African slaves were brought to North and South America, he said, describing such exploitation as “a grave evil.”

“There are 45 to 48 million slaves today – not in cotton fields, but in cotton sheets – to satisfy the sexual gluttony of the world,” Fr. Pacwa said. “This is disordered.”

Modern slavery rampant

Fr. Pacwa, who holds a Ph.D. in Old Testament, quoted several passages from Exodus about how God brought his people out of slavery and how God is able to free us from the slavery of our own impulses.

One of the contributing factors to today’s slavery, he said, can be traced to Jean-Jacques Rousseau whose philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the reign of terror that followed. Up to 200,000 Catholics were tortured and killed in the Vendee region of western France in an attempt to erase Catholicism from the area.

“The church teaches that you can’t have reason without faith,” he said.

If you put faith in human nature, it leads to violence, Fr. Pacwa said. He then began citing examples by referencing Karl Marx whose ideas are associated with over 100 million deaths throughout history.

Secular humanism has taken a toll

Secular humanism, which teaches that human beings are capable of being moral without religion, and relativism have taken their toll on the U.S. culture, he said, adding that those beliefs have contributed to court decisions that removed anything religious in public schools.
Referring to school massacres that have resulted in some asking “Where is God?” in these incidents, Fr. Pacwa answered: “You took him out!”

The violence of abortion, drug use, and murder has taken the place of truth, he said.

“If this nation is to continue, we must proclaim God forcefully, fearlessly, and courageously.”

On Saturday afternoon Fr. Pacwa talked about how a centralized government’s control in economic decision-making leads to inefficiencies and poor decision-making.

Although Hitler said he hated the communism of his enemy Stalin, Fr. Pacwa said there was no difference in their economic systems “because in both cases what happened is that the government took various methods of gaining control of the economy.”

Open market more efficient

Government control can never be more efficient than the open market, he said, “because nobody in the government can understand all of the economic issues going on.”

The collapse of the Soviet Union is one example, he said. Another example, Fr. Pacwa said, is China whose governmental policies will result in a demographic disaster by the year 2100 when China may have as few as 500 million people.

The one-child policy resulted in the abortions of hundreds of millions of unborn children – more often girls.

“There are presently 60 million men in China for whom there is no woman to marry,” Fr. Pacwa said.

He continued with several other examples of governmental programs that have resulted in social disasters including U.S. governmental programs that have resulted in out-of-wedlock birth rates from about 4 percent, according to the 1950 census, to an average in 2021 of 31.5 percent.

Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers

Author and popular speaker Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers also made three presentations at the conference, one – “Why Be Catholic” – to high school students.

His topic Saturday morning was “Meeting Jesus in the Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Church.”

“An encounter with Christ changes everything,” he said, “and youth haven’t encountered Christ.”

He explained that many young people find Mass boring because they don’t know why they are attending Mass.

Baptism starts us on our journey to Christ, the deacon said, with the beatific vision as our goal.

He continued by talking about Islam, Buddhism, and secular humanism but pointed out that one must consider Christianity because only Jesus Christ claimed to be God.

Other speakers:
• Jimmy Akin, a senior apologist at Catholic Answers, talked about the genesis of the bible and the trustworthiness of the Gospels.
• Annie Miller, a former Protestant who is active in Catholic family ministry, talked about marriage and family.
• Dr. William Lite, D.O., discussed intrauterine treatments for unborn patients and about the abortion pill and abortion pill reversal.
• Kendra Tierney, the widowed mother of 10, also spoke about family life and overcoming obstacles to family prayer.
• Artist Mike Debus was featured in a live art performance on Friday night. The artwork was auctioned to raise money for the conference.

Children’s Program teachers were Franciscan Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother, sisters of the Society of Our Mother of Peace, Franciscan Knights of the Holy Eucharist, and Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Bishop Carl A. Kemme led adoration Friday evening. Fr. Andrew Walsh, the conference’s spiritual director, led an outdoor Eucharistic procession and benediction, and celebrated Mass on Sunday.

Masters of ceremony were Mark Bogner and Clark and Amy Schafer.

Next year’s event is scheduled for Aug. 1-3.