Catholic Familyland has all the amenities of a campground — cabins, a pool, an auditorium, tennis courts, basketball courts, a fishing pond, jungle gyms, hiking trails — and eight Eucharistic chapels. Campers can roast marshmallows over a bonfire, play sports and pray the rosary. Each year, the weeklong Holy Family Fests combine all the classic elements of summer sleepaway camp with a faith-filled family vacation.
In the 1970s, Jerry and Gwen Coniker founded the Apostolate for Family Consecration to strengthen Catholic families. Both have since died, and Gwen is a Servant of God, being investigated by the Catholic Church for possible canonization as a saint.
One of AFC’s largest initiatives is Holy Family Fest, held at the Catholic Familyland campground in Bloomingdale, Ohio. This summer, there are six sessions with around 800 campers each week. Attendees can rent a cabin, camp on the grounds or stay in a nearby hotel. Every day, there’s morning programming for different age groups with local and national Catholic speakers, afternoon free time for relaxation, a family-friendly evening activity and opportunities for Mass, confession and adoration.
People come year after year from all over the country, said Stasia Phillips, who works for AFC. “One of the things we hear over and over again is just how excited and how renewed families are after they come,” she said. “They’re with other families who are also trying to live the faith and the beauty of the sacramental life. (Afterward) the families have this new energy to go out and to go back to their homes and their parishes and really keep evangelizing there.”
While many Catholic retreats and programs are specifically catered to men, women or children, this is made for the family, said Phillips. “We haven’t seen anyone who is doing what we’re doing here,” she said. “Our mission is to bring the whole family together at the same place at the same time and help them grow in the (Catholic) faith so that parents and kids and teens are all learning together, being challenged to grow together. The whole family is united.”
Sheri Burns, a parishioner of St. Raymond of Peñafort Church in Springfield, attended Holy Family Fest with her family on a friend’s advice. “I have to say, the idea was a little weird at first. A vacation with active Catholicism, do they even belong together?” asked Burns. “My husband and I came to realize over the next few summers that, yes, indeed they do. We began to see that the Holy Family Fest was really a wonderful blend of vacation and family retreat. (Our kids) begged to have this be our regular family vacation each year, beating out other options like trips to the beach or to the slopes.” This summer, their 16th in a row, Burns and her family once again will head to the Holy Family Fest.
Burns believes she found the tools to better raise her family in the faith at the Holy Family Fest. “They showed us what a holy family looks like and how we could achieve it. Their catechesis programs equipped both my husband and me to be able to actively form our whole family in the faith,” she said. “After coming to the understanding of our family’s mission, my husband and I were all in. We wanted to get our family’s ‘Catholic game’ on.”
Matt Zimmermann, a parishioner of St. Agnes Church in Arlington who works in the diocesan finance office, has attended for a few years and looks forward to going again. There’s genuine hospitality from the support staff, he said, and the families look out for one another. “It’s a very relaxing place. My wife and I could go to one of the talks and we knew our son would be doing stuff that was fun and we didn’t have to worry about it,” he said. “It’s just a very good environment. You can live your faith joyfully.”
