Annual Breakfast Features Professor and Priest
By Amanda Hudson, News Editor
November 4, 2021
CRYSTAL LAKE—The annual McHenry County Catholic Prayer Breakfast welcomed a room full of people to its first in-person breakfast since the pandemic began. The 10th annual event was held Saturday morning, Oct. 30, beginning with Mass at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church.
The Mass was celebrated by Father Keith Romke, pastor, who spoke about prayer, using his own experiences to illustrate how prayers evolve and mature over time and through difficulties including what appears to be unanswered prayers.
That well-attended Mass became an even larger crowd of all ages at the breakfast, held at D’Andrea Banquets. The event included a couple of award presentations, a recognition of the “beacons of light” — priests and religious — and of veterans, doctors, nurses and first responders in attendance, and intercessory prayers for the Church and its leaders, the United States and for families.
Father Phillip Kaim, Major (Ret.) Air Force chaplain, provided a humorous-yet-sobering address on his journey into military service, his assignments and challenges, and wisdom gained. That wisdom included the importance of planting seeds of faith and the need to minister to all levels and denominations of faith in the military.
His talk was followed by a video recording by Dr. Peter Kreeft who was unable to attend as planned because of a last-minute family emergency. Dr. Kreeft is a professor at Boston College, and his talk, “The Problem of Evil,” was a methodical, logical exploration of the presence of evil in the world and its effects.
Kreeft, 84, has authored 95 books and has taught philosophy at Boston College for some 50 years. The two kinds of evil he detailed were “the evil we do” and the “evil we suffer.” Two of his insights were that “death puts limits on evil” by limiting it to this life, and that “sin makes us stupid.”
The mission statement of the breakfast is “to provide an annual venue for Catholics to gather in fellowship and community prayer, and to participate in the evangelization which restores and strengthens Christ in the heart of the faithful. We seek to promote a deeper understanding of our faith through exposure and access to exceptional Catholic evangelizers … ”
Even though the pandemic isn’t over and although it was necessary for Dr. Kreeft to communicate via video, the annual McHenry County Catholic Prayer Breakfast did in fact provide two exceptional speakers who witnessed wonderfully to the faith at its 10th annual breakfast in 2021.
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