Our Speakers

Today, we have Dr. Dennis Marshall.  Unfortunately, the Aquinas College website has even less about him than we were able to post on Dr. Pestana.  Therefore, I'll simply tell you what little I know.  Dr. Marshall is a professor of theology, and holds a PhD from Duquesne University.  He is generally known as a very articulate and philosophical inclined person, making him an excellent addition to our conference.  He is also a supporter of the Knights of Columbus, a member of Aquinas' Catholic Studies Department and an adviser for Aquinas' pro-life club. 

The Kirk Center

Actually, it's properly named the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal and is the brainchild of the late Russell Kirk and his widow Annette.  Who is Russell Kirk?  He is largely credited with giving modern (but pre-neocon) conservatism a solid intellectual footing with his landmark work, The Conservative Mind. 
What the Kirk Center does is hold a number of seminars, spotlighting some aspect of the struggle for our culture, encouraging the attendees to go out and promote "the permanent things."  I've been lucky enough to have been there twice now, once last year for a Chesterton seminar and just this weekend for couple of talks that were largely about the antipathy that much of academia has for any notion of truth.
The relevance of all this to this site and the Culture of Life Conference is two-fold.  First, there is that world "culture" shared in both titles.  Culture is more than just apologetics and talking points.  Culture is all that goes into making our lives what they are, it is the messages sent to us by our media, our friends and shapes how we think and act.  Therefore, winning the culture wars will take far more than recounting facts and arguments, more that pointing out Truth.  We must also seek to point out the beauty and timelessness of Truth.
Secondly, Mrs. Kirk told me about the Culture of Life Foundation and how they may be a good resource for us in the future.  For now, go and check them out. 

HELP Pregnancy Center

HELP Pregnancy Crisis Aid is a Grand Rapids based Catholic crisis pregnancy center.  I've heard some good things about them and hope to collaborate with them on some work in the future.  In the meantime, they also have a big event coming up featuring EWTN's Barbara McGuigan.   Here's the link so you can check them out yourself:  http://helpgrandrapids.wordpress.com/

The Struggle for Human Dignity is Global

Earlier today, I stumbled across a particularly shocking story.  Apparently, some nice young couple in China decided to sell their kids - so they could keep up their online gaming habit.  Seriously.  Now, don't ask me how they had three kids in China.  It is possible the story is fabricated.  However, the paper cited as the source does exist though I can't view it.  And if it is a hoax, then ABC was fooled too.
In any case, the worse part of this is that the couple seems totally surprised that they did anything wrong.

New Pro-life clinic

The National Catholic Register is reporting that a new pro-life clinic is opening in LA, courtesy of Eduardo Verastegui, the star of Bella.  What's that?  You haven't seen Bella?  It's actually very good.  Get yourself to a video store and rent it pronto!

Anyway, here's the link to the story at the Register:  St. Gianna

Our Speakers

Here is the first of the very brief bios on our speakers.  Dr. Pestana will be giving the first of our talks, Natural Law and the Life Issues.  The purpose of this talk is to demonstrate how abortion, contraception and euthanasia are contrary to reason, independent of revelation.

As promised, here is the bio, pulled from the website of Grand Valley State University:


Mark Pestana earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Chicago and an M.A. at the University of Kentucky. He also holds a B.A. from Colby College.
His main interests are ethics, medieval philosophy, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mind. He is the author of Moral Virtue or Mental Health? (Peter Lang Publishing, 1998).

Upcoming

First welcome to anyone coming over from Mark Shea's blog.  Link like crazy and spread the word!

Coming soon, we'll have short bios on our speakers.  These will be little one or two paragraph bios to give you just a bit of background.  Also, in a couple of weeks, we should have official flyer done up and scanned into the site. 

Finally, we updated the links again with some more pro-life groups and Catholic radio stations.  Take special note of Ave Maria radio if you want to get a preview of our headline speaker Al Kresta.

Updates

We just updated with a bunch of links and blog feeds.  Check them out in the sidebar to the right.

The Details

The conference will be taking place October 8, 2011 at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids.

The speakers and topics are:

Dr. Mark Pestana (GVSU) - Natural Law and the Life Issues

Dr. Dennis Marshall (Aquinas) - Humanae Vitae

Dr. Robert Marko (Aquinas) - The Gospel of Life


Al Kresta (Ave Maria Radio) - The Civilization of Love

Things kick off at 9:00 AM and break for an hour lunch at 11.  Advance registration is $20 and includes lunch.  If you don't register, the price is the same but lunch won't be covered.  Details on how to register should be coming soon.  In the meantime, email kofccultureoflife@gmail.com or call Eric at 616-566-7932 with any questions.

Welcome!

This is the official blog for the 1st Annual Culture of Life Conference in Grand Rapids, MI.  The theme for this year is "The Dignity and Value of Human Life."  The purpose of the conference is to present the teaching of the Catholic Church on the hot-button issues of the day; those having to do with life.
This blog will provide a minimum of weekly updates on the conference as well as provide news and commentary on abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, contraception, etc on an ongoing basis.  We'll also provide occasional essays on other issues related to the development of culture, mostly in the Western world.
So, stay tuned, we've got a lot in store.