cmf_founders

The conference theme is overcoming obstacles to relationships, with a focus on personal relationships with Christ. The Catholic Men's Fellowship was founded 25 years ago with the slogan "All Growth Occurs in Relationships." The founders will explain how the Holy Spirit led to the creation of the fellowship and how it has helped them grow in their relationship with Christ. They emphasize the importance of prayer, sacraments, and avoiding sin to overcome obstacles. Sharing personal experiences and giving witness to each other's growth has been impactful. The fellowship has helped men overcome fear, restore broken relationships, and find support and love from one another. As you know, overcoming obstacles to relationships is the theme of this year's conference. From the beginning of the Catholic Men's Fellowship 25 years ago, the focus on relationships has always been our personal relationship with Christ. Due to the emphasis on this relationship, in the early days of the fellowship we adopted the slogan, All Growth Occurs in Relationships. Growth results not just from a relationship with Christ, but all personal growth follows from that relationship. In turn, we can become better individuals, husbands, fathers, and members of our parish as well as the wider community. And as something new this year, we assembled three of the founders of our fellowship to explain what we mean by that concept and how to overcome obstacles to it. They will explain how the guidance of the Holy Spirit gave rise to a new lay movement in the church called the Catholic Men's Fellowship. They will also give you an idea of what was happening in their lives at that time and how they have grown in Christ from participating for 25 years in regular fellowship meetings. The first to speak is Declan O'Sullivan, who currently is chairman of the Board of Trustees. He will be followed by Marianist Father Ken Sommer, whom you met earlier, and who is the spiritual architect of the Catholic Men's Fellowship and its lifelong spiritual director. And finally, you'll hear from Tom Young. Tom's enthusiasm for the fellowship and peer-to-peer sharing of his life in Christ caused him to be the principal recruiter for the Catholic Men's Fellowship. Declan will be the first to speak. My life was radically changed in October of 1985, 25 years ago, in the BG Café on 4th Street in downtown Cincinnati. At that time, my life was falling apart. I was deeply depressed, my financial condition was perilous, and I could not turn it around. Nothing I attempted seemed to work. I was facing a blank wall. Then one morning, a colleague at work asked me to lunch. He told me that he had a new business opportunity and that he would like me to take the lead on a project with which we were jointly responsible. He said that a new opportunity had arisen for him and that he would like me to take over the old project. My immediate reaction was to say no. I was too depressed to take on a task that was evidencing difficulties in execution. But the next thing I hear myself saying, yes, and a surge of energy coursed through my body. I did not know what had happened, but I knew that it was not my old self saying yes. It was the power of Jesus Christ within me. I went on to successfully complete the project, and that moment changed my life. Does anyone here relate to that? I now know that Jesus heals the brokenhearted. I experienced it personally. I was so excited. Could it be that my God would touch my life so radically? I wanted to tell other men about my good fortune. Fortunately, I had Father Ken Sommer as my spiritual advisor, and he told me that I had substituted the false gods of material well-being, money, and influence for the loving God of the scriptures. He said it was inevitable that I should self-destruct. Father Ken introduced me and a number of other men who became charter members of the Catholic Men's Fellowship to his retreat talks called The Call to Holiness. He emphasized that the false gods of material possessions were a major obstacle to a relationship with Jesus Christ. He said we needed to pray an hour a day, avail of the sacramental life of the church, and commit sin no more. These were the ways that we could overcome the obstacles to a full relationship with Jesus Christ. But there was one other thing that we discovered, a very important thing. At the end of each talk, Father Ken would ask one of us to give witness to the efficacy of his teaching. We found that in giving witness to one another in the action of God in our lives, we greatly magnified the impact and validity of Father Ken's teaching. That was the initial spark for the development of fellowship meetings. A vision of the Men's Fellowship was conceived, and it's on the back cover of your programs. And as they say, the rest is history. I have benefited enormously from 25 years of going to Men's Fellowship meetings. We talk about taking a leap of faith with Jesus Christ, but one of our guys one day precisely did that. Although fearful of heights, he jumped out of an airplane with his son in order to establish an enduring bond of trust that was missing from that relationship. He shared that story with us so that you have to do extraordinary things sometimes to restore broken relationships. In another meeting, we were surprised to learn that one of the most reliable members was considering divorce. Instead of condemning him, the group gave examples of their own difficulties with their spouses and how they handled the situation. No advice was given, just testimony about giving the problem over to the Lord and how it worked out for them. Finally, there are men in this auditorium today who, like me 25 years ago, are paralyzed by fear, fear of failure, of not achieving the false American dream of material possessions, who worship at the altar of false gods. Take those idols right now and embrace Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Father Ken? I am in no way going to compete with that. Declan is a remarkable person. What has 25 years done for me with these men? Well, I'll tell you, I'm going to be as honest as I can. That's pretty good. I have a very strong ego, E-G-O, and it's a good ego. I worked hard, I tried hard, I competed, I won. I was trying to be good. I have a good ego and I didn't know it. Guys, I didn't know it. I really didn't know it, but I had a bad ego. I had a bad ego in me. There was something else in me that wanted to seemingly push me to be better than everybody else. I didn't even know it, it was unconscious, but it was down there. I'm a preacher and a pretty good one. I'm a teacher and a pretty good one. And over the last 25 years, I've been trying to do that. But these men, over the last 15 years, have said continually to me in their meeting, Father Ken, you talk too much. I didn't get it. I set myself up for that one. Well, I'm purposely doing it to make you aware of who I really am. I didn't get it, guys. I didn't get it. I didn't want to hear it. Don't you realize who I am and what I am? Don't you realize that? Why don't you listen to me? And I kept saying it more and more the same old thing. And you know what they said? We've heard it all before. We know it. Guys, I didn't get it. And they kept saying to me something that I never realized. They kept saying, just be, just your presence speaks. I still didn't get it. Well, I'm getting it. And these men over the past 15 years have brought into my awareness a miracle has happened where a man who thought he was something, bad ego, I'm beginning to get it. And my wonderful brothers in Christ, it's terrific. It's a little bit of being real, being honest and being just who you are. I am so grateful for these men of telling me what I didn't even know about myself. Secondly, when I go to these meetings and I've gone to 25 years to a meeting on every other Saturday morning. And on 25 years, I've been to every Monday, every other Monday with about four or five men. And we've shared and try to prepare for the meeting. You know, it gives me such great joy, and I mean real great joy to hear men, men like us, just ordinary men just sharing their soul with each other as honestly as they can. I can't tell you what it means for me to sit in the presence of a group of men. It touches every one of them when you hear somebody say what's going on in their soul. And immediately when they say honestly what's going in their soul, something's happening to the whole group because they say, my God, that's Tom Young or that's Declan or that's Gus. I thought I was all alone. You mean there's somebody that feels that way, that's got that feeling? I have one gentleman, just previous meeting, at the end of the meeting, he said, and he was somewhat tearful, he said, I feel so blessed to be here this morning. He said, to hear this sharing, I get so much wisdom. What you men shared this morning has helped me so much. My brothers, that's the Holy Spirit, that's Jesus Christ. When two or three ordinary gentlemen, men, get together and share honestly with each other, God is present there in a way that you cannot imagine. And he teaches us and he binds us together in a one man that is not just based on human blood, but it's on a relationship that's eternal. It's real brothers in Jesus Christ. And I can't tell you, I can't tell you what joy it is for me to sit in a meeting and to see the awesome work of the Holy Spirit working in a group of men, by and large, ordinary and yet very, very honest. And finally, and most of all. I have experienced men who have sincerely loved me. I'm a priest and I'm very grateful for that. I'm a Catholic and I'm extraordinarily Catholic, I appreciate that. I'm an American and I'm grateful for that. And I'm a man. I have in my soul good, God has blessed me very much, I have in my soul frailty and weaknesses, and you heard one of my predominant faults. But I have in my soul, I have received from these men over 25 years, a great love for me, just who I am. That is one of God's greatest gift. And I, for myself, I'm being as honest as I can again, in my soul, I've tried to love these men as best as I can. I have no illusions that I'm any better lover or better than anybody else. But what I am, I shared my soul with these men. Whatever I am, I'm not all that I like to be and I don't feel I can save anybody or have to try to make anybody good or better or worse or whatever. I can just try to love them the way they've tried to love me and my brothers, I can't tell you how grateful I am that I'm just loved and can love as best I can and they've loved me as best as I can. Thank you. Initially, I didn't want to do this, I've been kind of in a spiritual desert, frankly, if anybody ever been there, I'm just feeling out of sync at home and my work and everything else. I don't feel much more uplifted now. How did I how do we get this idea? Remember, Promise Keepers started. Remember, a lot of Catholic people were going to Promise Keepers. I ran around all these evangelical Christians. I thought, let's do something for the Catholic guys. And that was my initial idea to get some Catholic guys together under the Catholic tradition to share. This thing has become fairly ordinary to some people like a Catholic retreat. But if you look at the numbers that were discussed earlier today, the number of cities, it's quite extraordinary. Wouldn't you agree? Quite extraordinary. This is definitely the work of the Holy Spirit, and I'll show you some more examples here. I won't be very vulnerable to you. How do you get men into a group? How do you get men to show up here? One of my favorite things is to ask anybody, one person, just come one time. I know you don't want to come. I don't like it. You're not going to church. Just come one time. Well, most men can do that. Well, that one time may or may not stick. But getting valley to valley with somebody, getting real close to somebody is remarkable. Now, I'm going to use an example. My good friend Dan Gibbons over here, I don't know if Dan will come on the stage or not, but at the second conference of Thomas Moore, I asked Dan Gibbons, who has done our autovisual for 15 years now, to come over to Thomas Moore. Now, he said I got in there under subterfuge. I can't remember what I told him, but he showed up. We've become very, very close friends. If you'll see my blue ribbon here, I'm a prostate cancer survivor. I'll get back to that in a minute. Dan also was turned up with prostate cancer, and I run a prostate cancer survivors group here in town. So I counseled with Dan on that, and I believe we help each other a lot. You know, when you give to somebody else, what you get back is just as powerful. Wouldn't you agree? And this sharing is just dynamite. Well, after that, Dan had a bout with kidney stones, and he got an infection that was absolutely life threatening. I think it was last summer. And I was visiting him either at home or at the hospital. In March, his wife came up and said, Tom, and I almost cry when I say this, you can't believe how important the Catholic Men's Fellowship and you getting involved, getting Dan involved with this group, means to Dan and I. I mean, I had goosebumps. We all have a hard time taking a compliment, but I was blown away. Now, think about it. How many men have you influenced on a national basis or local base or whatever base? You don't even know about it. Right. No idea that the Holy Spirit's working. Now, why small groups? The big word, I think, is accountability. A lot of people have no accountability in their life. It's easy for me, probably for some of you guys, that's isolate, ignore. We like to say stuff it instead of share it. And what's the result? Spiritual, emotional, physical sickness of some sort. I suffer from depression. I'm on two kinds of medication, Welbutrin and Zimbalta. I'm treated at Linder's Center of Hope, which if you've never heard of it, Carl Linder's family funded. It's in Mason, one of the top 10 mental health facilities in America. So if any of that in your family, you have to check out the Center of Hope. I met the leader, Dr. Kitt, at a smoking rotary. He said, you wouldn't believe this coming out there, successful men and women, use of success, the American dream and control of everything. And then the recession hit. They're stressed out. They're full of fear. They don't know how to deal with it. They've lived on self-will all these lives. They don't need God. I've been on self-will and I'm full of pride. And they're crushed. Now, I've been taking the medication, it's working pretty well, but when I talk to my buddies about it, it sure helps. There's a lot of depression around, but nobody wants to talk about the big secret. So you help your friends talking about it. Back to prostate cancer. Prostate cancer is the number one killer of men with cancer. But men never get exams. They really don't like this exam. Now, one of my missions in life, I do give free second opinions. On a serious side, when somebody tells you you have cancer, it scares the living bejeebers out of you. I mean, it really scares you. And where do you turn? You come to a support group, the support group, and they say, well, we're going to give you a turn. You come to a support group, the support group. There's two side effects of treatment for prostate cancer, impotence and incontinence. Now, it's pretty personal, so I'm not going to tell you which one I have, but it's not incontinence. That has put quite a stress on my marriage, unbelievable stress on my marriage. And a side effect of that is the devil is attacking me with dirty thoughts, sexual thoughts, sexual temptations, day and night. And Jim alluded to the devil looking for an opening is very, very brutal. The prostate work, on the other hand, has been very rewarding because I helped a friend of mine die, Kasey Young. If prostate cancer gets outside the prostate, you are going to die for sure. It's just a matter of how long can you extend your life. And Kasey got me involved and I went all the way to his deathbed. And it was very rewarding to do that. Now, back to the sexual temptation, the really good news is I've heard it goes away right after you die. Now, what about accountability? I went to a training session for prison Kairos, a national international ministry, last Friday night. And guess what the end result of Kairos is? How many people know? What is it? Prayer and share groups with hardcore prisoners. What is marriage encounter talking about? Prayer and share. What's Griseo talk about? Prayer and share. What's the church say? Get a spiritual director. Accountability coming in. In a secular world, you have to do quarterly reviews, you get reviewed by your boss, you have to do expense accounts, you have to do business plans, all for accountability. Here's the bottom line. I love the 12-step program. If you've never read about the 12-step program, this is a real easy thing to do. Amen. The first step is power. You have to admit you're powerless. Huh? I'm self-willed one run riot and your life has become unmanageable, your powers over something and unmanageable. Who wants to admit that? I'll skip number two. Number three is we've heard it today. Turn your will and your life over to God as you understand them. Number four is, and this is what I'm working on and scared the heck out of you, do a very deep personal moral inventory of the good stuff and the bad stuff. The number one offense in relationships is resentment. We all have them buried very, very deep. And finally, and I'm going to end, is number five. You have to share your moral inventory with another human being, and that's called your sponsor. You're right belly to belly. So what's the bottom line? Save your soul, extend your life, get in a group, but better get one and one with a buddy. Thank you.