The meeting began on a Wednesday night at
the bucolic campus of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois, and the frank discussion quickly moved into a variety of topics including several difficult ones such as the Council of Trent, which is particularly anti-Protestant but still binding for Catholics, and the Catholic doctrine of the church as the prolongation of the incarnation of Christ (presented by Father Thomas A. Baima, the Catholic co-chair of the event), as well as social issues ranging from care for the poor, abortion, and the recent developments in gender and sexual ethics in the West.