Setting Right a World Turned Upside Down: Transformation in Christ Versus a Sickness Unto Death
The 2107 Gardone conference featured such speakers as Drs. John Rao, Thomas Pink, Thomas Stark, Clemens Cavallin, Joseph Shaw, Chris Feraara, and more speaking on the roots of the current crisis in the Church.

The Eternal Return: Perennial Problems of Catholic Christendom (Parts I-III)
John C. Rao (professor of history at St. John’s University and Director of the Roman Forum), explains the topic for the 2017 Gardone, Italy Summer Symposium, “Setting Right a World Turned Upside Down: Transformation in Christ Versus a Sickness Unto Death,” which was deliberately left vague--to allow speakers to respond to any potential new alarming actions or pronouncements from the Vatican. He then reviews the themes from the previous year underpinning for the current discussions. His second talk shows how Catholics were influenced by the Moderate Enlightenment's attempt to battle the atheistic Radical Enlightenment into abandoning doctrinal concerns and focusing on "God in nature" and pastoral activities alone. His third talk deals with post-French Revolution Catholicism, the rediscovery of the full doctrinal significance of the Incarnation, the need to reunite doctrinal and pastoral activity, and finally on the backsliding that, by the 1960's, led us right back to the situation we were in (and worse!) in the late 1700's.

Vatican II as a crisis of official theology
Dr. Thomas Pink, professor of philosophy at King’s College in London, talks about how errors in the Church’s currently official theology have a root cause in the denial of the vital importance of the union of Church and State and of the role of Baptism. He proposes that instead of aiming for “dialogical harmony” with those who remain in the dominion of Satan, the Church’s duty is to convert the unconverted. And when those goals are contradicted by distortions of Catholic doctrine, our duty is to battle against official theology when it is nonsense.

Christianity and Politics: A Philosophical Foundation for the Confessional State
Dr. Thomas Stark is a professor of philosophy at the Benedict XVI Academy of Philosophy and Theology and the University of St. Pölten in Austria. He explains how Christianity should rightfully never be separated from politics, because political decisions are always made on the basis of beliefs in the purpose of the individual. Only Catholics know the truth of human purpose from both natural reason and Divine Revelation. Against those who claim the ideal that Catholicism should guide political decisions is unrealistic in the current times, he counters that philosophers, like the early Christians, do not think about what is but about what should be.

Imagining a New Christendom (Part I-II)
Dr. Clemens Cavallin, professor of religious studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, speaks about the difficulties in imagining a Christian society when religious belief has often been replaced not with atheism but with an undemanding “spiritualism.” In his second talk, he provides examples of the ways modernized versions of yoga are promoted as a means to glorify the body and exalt man above God. He quotes Pope Pius X’s prescient observations on the dangers of modernity and on Mary as the source of our only hope to all things in Christ.

The Problem of Participation in the Latin Liturgy
Dr. Joseph Shaw (Senior Research Fellow at St Benet’s Hall, Oxford University) examines the Church's official explanations (starting at the Council of Trent) for the use of Latin in the liturgy, and finds them somewhat wanting. He agrees that efforts to increase knowledge of Latin can contribute to the better understanding of mass goers, then he goes on to propose that Latin facility is not at all required. He provides evidence that Mass goers who do not understand Latin have for centuries and still continue to participate actively and fruitfully in Latin liturgies.

The Catholic State and Gabriel Garcia Moreno
Christopher Ferrara,Esq., is an American attorney who writes and speaks frequently in defense of traditional Catholicism. Mr. Ferrara critiques the notion that Catholic states should remain a thing of the past. He quotes Pope Leo XIII about Church-State relations and speaks on the undeniable benefits the Catholic Church brings to nations that are guided by the Church. Ferrara gives the example of the successful Catholic state established by Ecuadorian statesman Gabriel Garcia Moreno, which was ended only by Moreno’s martyrdom by liberals after he was elected for a third term as Ecuador’s president in 1875.

The Upending of Happiness
Father Edmund Waldstein (doctoral candidate and professor at Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule, Austria) examines how in ancient times and throughout most of the history of Catholic philosophy, happiness was seen to be found in participation in the common good through virtue. In modern philosophy, the focus changed to an individualistic understanding of happiness as private contentment, however attained. Father Waldstein points out the flaws in Martin Luther’s emphatic critique of the classical idea of happiness shared by those, inside and outside the Church, who have been influenced by Luther’s thought in Germany and elsewhere.

B. A. Santamaria: Australia’s Catholic Genius
Australian barrister Colonel James Bogle, Esq. speaks about the life and accomplishments of his fellow countryman and acquaintance, B. A. Santamaria, as a significant model for lay Catholic activism in the political sphere. Santamaria closely collaborated with Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne, and by his writings and organizing ability, Santamaria promoted authentic Catholic Social Justice principles to counter the lies both of communism and of unrestricted capitalism. As Colonel Bogle describes, a remarkable part of Santamaria’s achievements was to reverse the almost total communist control of trade unions in Australia.

The Holy Spirit Guides the Pope?
Rev. John Hunwicke (Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham) talks about the current confusion about the true relationship between the Holy Spirit and the pope. He reads several excerpts from writings by prelates surrounding Pope Francis, which seem to seek to admonish bishops and convince lay faithful that whatever the pope, this pope, does is guided by the Holy Spirit, even if he introduces never before seen novelties. Fr. Hunwicke clarifies that the Church has originated nothing: The pope’s role is never to add anything new but to rigorously defend and expound divine revelation and Sacred Tradition.