Greg Schutte, MSW, LISW-S
Building Eucharistic Marriages
With the decline of strong healthy marriages and Catholics who believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, Greg, in his ministry as a Catholic Marriage Therapist, is helping parishes in connecting the dots between the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Marriage in order to help couples build Christ-Centered, Eucharistic marriages. He will discuss the urgent mission for the Church to creatively reach out to more broken families.
Greg Schutte, MSW, LISW-S is the Senior Director of Marriage Works! Ohio in Dayton, Ohio. He’s a marriage therapist and the author of the Discovering Our Deepest Desire Catholic marriage enrichment program, and the on-line video Catholic marriage enrichment course “Building a Eucharistic Marriage.” Greg and his wife Stephanie have been happily married for 30 years and are the parents of 7 children. Greg plays in the Catholic band “ROMANS”.
Martha Fernández-Sardina
The Emperor Has No Clothes On – See It and Say It and Stop The Madness Already
This thoughtful and provocative presentation will address the real dangers facing marriage and family life, undermining and destroying sanity, rationality, and reality in the world and in the church today. We will look at the concerted and coordinated, massive and malicious, widespread and ever-expanding activist agenda to deconstruct and dismantle all we know to be good, true, beautiful, and sacred in the Church and in society, including the concept of what a man and a woman are and are not, what a person and a marriage is and is not, what are rights and what are wrongs. It will end on a challenging yet encouraging note with a message of love and a promise of hope and healing.
Martha Fernández-Sardina is a Catholic evangelizer and the Founder and President of RememberYouAreLoved.com and EresAmado.net, a worldwide new “lovevangelization” outreach project helping people know and show that we are all loveable and love-able because God is love. Her love outreach is one of many initiatives of Prepare The Way Enterprises™, a ministry dedicated to equipping Catholics to “rediscover the joy of believing and the enthusiasm for communicating the faith” (Porta Fidei, 7.) Martha hosts a weekly RememberYouAreLoved.com series on Relevant Radio’s Morning Air Show With John Morales where she helps listeners receive and give love better each day. Martha earned a degree in Psychometry and Psychological Investigation, a graduate degree in Clinical Psychology Magna Cum Laude, and a Master of Arts in Theology and Christian Ministry with honors. A New York native, she grew up between Miami and Dominican Republic in a bilingual and tri-cultural family, giving her an ability to appreciate unity in diversity.
Robert J. McCarty, D.Min
Passing on the Faith: The Pain and the Promise!
Where has everyone gone? Can we bring them home? Research has identified the challenge of engaging children, youth, and young adults in the faith journey. Let’s explore the challenges of passing on faith and accompanying families and propose Catholicism as a comprehensive way of living – a way of encountering Jesus. And identify characteristics of an engaged, domestic faith community that takes seriously the challenge of passing on the faith.
Bob is a pastoral ministry consultant, having served in national, diocesan, parish, and school settings. He offers workshops, retreats, and training programs in ministry skills and issues internationally and assists Catholic ministry organizations in mission assessment and strategic pastoral planning. His most recent book is Faith Talk: Having Conversations with Youth that Matter! and coming soon, The Heart of a Disciple. Bob is adjunct at the Catholic University of America.
Regina Boyd
Marriage, Mental Health, and the Church: What to do when couples demand/need more than you can provide
What the talk will accomplish:
General Theme: What the Church can and cannot do practically to support marriages
· Discuss best research of what is essential for healthy marriages
· Explain ways to support couples that fits into the Church’s capacity so that those on the front lines of marriage ministry know where to invest their time & energy
· How to recognize signs of when to refer to counseling, how to refer/get comfortable suggesting therapy
Regina Boyd is the Founder of Boyd Counseling Services, a Catholic mental health & coaching practice that provides in-person and virtual services for couples and individuals. She works with clients who are experiencing stress, life changes, desire healthy emotional connection, and seek to develop problem solving strategies within their relationships. Regina is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and a Licensed Mental Health Counselor. She is also a featured contributor to the Hallow app, and lives in Orlando, Florida with her husband and their beautiful daughter.
Damon Owens
Embodied Love: Marital Revival for a Misgendered World
We believe the body, and its sex, are God’s original sign, call, and power to love. From Adam and Eve to Christ-Bridegroom and Church-Bride, marriage remains a potent, divine state of life. Whether we personally enter into marriage or not, reverence is due to this communion of persons that since Genesis generates life, engenders love, and binds generations in a genealogy. But what about our time, right now, that denies even the reality of gender? Can marriage even survive in this culture? Can it – even experienced as good, bad, and ugly – continue to be the sign that leads us to the reality of Heaven? In this presentation, Damon Owens will lay bare the real crisis of marriage and gender in our culture, and propose investing in the revival of sacramental marriage as the key to the revival of faith, the Church, the family, and the culture.
Damon Owens, international speaker and evangelist, is executive director of Joyful Ever After and National Parish Engagement Officer for Communio. The first executive director of the Theology of the Body Institute, Damon has dedicated three decades to helping couples get the marriage they want from the marriage they have, and now also, to equipping the Church to evangelize through the renewal of healthy relationships, marriage, and the family.
Damon has published numerous articles, appears on many radio, television, and Catholic faith programs, and has hosted and produced three 13-part television series for EWTN. He is also an accomplished gospel singer honored with a solo during the 1995 NJ Papal Mass at Giants Stadium presided by Pope St. John Paul II.
Bishop Jorge Rodríguez
Doctor in Sacred Theology by the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome. Dean of the Theology Department of the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome (1994-1997). He has taught Theology at the Pontifical Lateran University, at the Pontifical Institute Regina Mundi and at the Institute for Religious Sciences at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. From 2006 to 2014 he was Vice Rector and Professor at Saint John Vianney Theological Seminary of Denver. He was appointed Pastor of Holy Cross Parish in Thornton, CO., in 2014. On November 4, 2016, Pope Francis appointed him and was consecrated as the Auxiliary Bishop of the archdiocese of Denver. From 2016 to 2019 he was the Vicar for Clergy, and currently he is the Vicar for Hispanic Ministry and Ethnic Catholic minorities in the archdiocese of Denver, and pastor of Saint Joseph parish in Denver.