About 120 Catholics from around the United States who serve in family ministries gathered in Louisville Oct. 13-16 for the national Catholic Family Life Association’s annual conference.
The association, formerly known as the National Association of Catholic Family Life Ministers, “offers support and professional enrichment to those who minister to families,” according to its website, cfla.com.
This year’s event, held at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Louisville, included a talk on the impact of immigration policy on families, as well as opportunities for worship and fellowship.
Kathy Schmugge, president-elect of the association, said building friendships and sharing ideas among family ministers at the conference help prevent burnout among ministers.
“We’re all working at the same thing — family and marriage — but we are approaching it, perhaps, from different life experiences,” she said.
Meeting someone in the same ministry can feel like meeting someone you’ve known your whole life, she said. “They’ve been there and they can understand how it’s different from any other ministry.”
As a seasoned diocesan director in the Diocese of Charleston, Schmugge said she most enjoys sharing her “lessons learned” with new directors of ministries. “I love to be able to prevent someone from making a mistake that I may have made.”
Speaking on this year’s conference theme — “The Family: Building Communities of Hope” — Schmugge said ministries to couples and families have a vital part to play in restoring hope in the culture.
Some individuals, she said, “feel like love is impossible, that there’s no such thing as love.”
Ministry to couples and the family can restore this hope, she noted.
When “you can see the love between the couple, it becomes an image that you can see of what God’s love looks like. And when that’s authentic, then it allows people to believe that love is possible,” Schmugge said.
A couple that emanates authentic love “not only gives hope for love,” but also provides an image of God — who is Love itself — that is “believable,” restoring a hope in God, she said.
Throughout the conference, attendees had the opportunity to participate in Mass, engage in roundtable discussions, interact with exhibitors and attend breakout sessions.
Among the breakout sessions offered on Oct. 15 was “Immigration, Catholic Teaching, and the Family,” a presentation by Lisa DeJaco Crutcher, CEO of Catholic Charities of Louisville, and Kat Riddle, Catholic Charities of Louisville’s Hispanic services coordinator.
During the talk, DeJaco Crutcher shared a brief history of immigration and immigration law in the U.S., described the current reality of immigration here and discussed the pastoral challenges for those who minister to families.
The reality of “mixed-status families,” where some family members have citizenship and others do not, presents difficulties in pastoral care, DeJaco Crutcher said.
Parents who are undocumented may fear being involved in their children’s schools or in the wider community, she noted as an example.
If subject to deportation, undocumented parents whose children have citizenship may be faced with the difficult decision of whether to leave their child with someone else or to take their child with them, she said.
People who have recently had Temporary Protected Status terminated are facing this difficult decision, she said. This status, known by its abbreviation TPS, is granted to people from certain countries — designated by Homeland Security — that are experiencing ongoing crises. The protections have recently been terminated or there are termination plans for several countries, including El Salvador, Haiti and Honduras.
“Twenty-two percent of the TPS holders from El Salvador, Haiti and Honduras came as children and lived in the United States for more than 20 years. They have mortgages; they have approximately 273,000 citizen children,” said DeJaco Crutcher.
“These folks had legal permission to be here. Now they no longer have that permission, but many of them have families here. So if you’re a TPS holder, for instance, from Haiti. You’ve been here legally, you’ve been working legally, you have children here, and now your status has been removed.
“And so the question on the table for you is, are you going back to Haiti? Are you taking these children who are citizens of the United States and packing them up and taking them to Haiti, a country where they probably don’t know the language and certainly don’t have the same advantages that they would have here in the United States?” she said.
Undocumented individuals with U.S.-born children, as well as those who have married a U.S. citizen, could apply for citizenship, she said.
But they would have to “get in the line,” she said, noting that “the line from Mexico for a first category family preference is currently 20 years long.”
Riddle followed DeJaco Crutcher’s comments with a reminder of the U.S. bishops’ position on immigration reform. Their January 2025 document, “Catholic Elements of Immigration Reform,” articulates six elements, she explained. They are:
- “Enforcement efforts should be targeted, proportional and humane.”
- “Humanitarian protections and due process should be ensured.”
- “Long-time residents should have an earned pathway to citizenship.”
- “Family unity should remain a cornerstone of the U.S. system.”
- “Legal pathways should be expanded, reliable and efficient.”
- “The root causes of forced migration should be addressed.”
Steve and Kathy Beirne, participants in the conference from Portland, Maine, who are involved in marriage preparation ministry said they have seen how the current realities of immigration have placed challenges on the couples.
“We’ve worked with a number of couples preparing for marriage who are immigrants,” Steve Beirne said. His wife added, “We were in this workshop because we wanted to get some facts and figures.”
The couple is currently preparing a couple from Congo for marriage — the groom is living in the U.S., and the bride is in Congo, they said.
“He’s returning (to Congo) at the end of this month to be married the first of November. He does not know if his wife will be able to come back with him. And it could be years. It could be years and years,” Steve Beirne said.
The Catholic Family Life Association’s conference was preceded by the Horario Conferencia Federación Hispana, which drew about 80 people Oct. 11 and 12.
Father Wilfredo Fernandez, a priest of the Archdiocese of Louisville, was among the presenters. He spoke on “How to Become Spiritual Pilgrims of Hope in Our Service to Marriages and Families.”
