Thanks for the invitation to present a keynote.

I thought about that word.

It's probably much too pretentious for what I'm sharing this evening.

I would like to put more in a category of just some personal reflections,

just in the context of an informal dinner,

but in the context of getting your program started for the next couple of days.

It really is just personal reflections based on 46 years as a priest and 26 years as a bishop

already. In those 46 years and 26 years, have been lots of learning. And many, many experiences

have come from those years so relatively

briefly tonight in the context of our first gathering it's this question how do we carry on the

work of the church in a time of crisis or how do we evangelize in a time of crisis?

Now, when we think about crisis, it strikes me that we have to remember that it's more complicated than we might think.

We speak about crisis today.

We think, first of all, of course, about the sexual abuse crisis.

And we cannot underestimate, we cannot minimize for a moment the great harm that sexual abuse crisis has caused in our church and our society, for the victims and the survivors themselves, of course, for their families, for many, many other faithful members of our church.

It's caused a lot of unhappiness and anger and confusion among even the best intention of people.

So the crisis begins, of course, the sexual abuse crisis, but I don't want to dwell

in that tonight because we've all heard so much about

that, and we'll continue to hear a lot more about it.

There's other manifestations of the crisis as well.

The decline in Sunday mass attendance and the decline, the widespread decline in sacramental

practice.

...