Josef Pieper wrote that leisure is the basis of culture, necessary in facilitating a state of mind for contemplating philosophical and theological truths. It is not to be confused with idleness, something rampant in modernity. Commenting on the industrialization of Western society, G.K. Chesterton said, “people are inundated, blinded, deafened, and mentally paralyzed by a flood of vulgar and tasteless externals, leaving them no time for leisure, thought, or creation from within themselves.”

Western society has only gotten more vulgar and chaotic since Chesterton’s time, making it almost impossible to find a leisurely atmosphere to contemplate eternal truths. The grandfather of notable Southern author, Ben Robertson, held a view of industrialized societies akin to Chesterton regarding its tendency to destroy leisure. Robertson wrote that his grandfather believed that “eventually the United States would come back to the South for the key to its culture.” The strongest cultural attributes of the Deep South are hospitality, manners, and— most importantly— the capacity for leisure.

Fighting through traffic on congested city streets in order to get to a conference held at an impersonal corporate hotel is not an environment that fosters a relationship with the God who has called you by name.

Join us in Natchez, Mississippi, the oldest European settlement on the Mississippi River. A small southern town known for its antebellum architecture and populated by southern belles and good-old southern boys who know how to relax and slow down. It is a town also known as the home of the Basilica of St. Mary, “an architectural masterpiece among Catholic Churches in the south” and home to the first statue dedicated (in 1846) to the Blessed Mother under the title of “The Immaculate Conception,” eight years before it was declared a dogma of the Church.