CLARITY2022 Speakers
MARY RICE HASSON
AM Session
The Cultural Landscape:
Where We Are and What’s at Stake
ONE (1) SUBSTANTIVE CONTINUING LEGAL EDUCATION CREDIT AVAILABLE
Mary Rice Hasson, J.D., is the Kate O’Beirne Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., where she directs the Catholic Women’s Forum, a network of Catholic professional women and scholars. Mary is also the co-founder of the Person and Identity Project, an initiative that equips parents and faith-based institutions with the resources they need to counter gender ideology and promote the truth about the human person.
An attorney and policy expert, Mary has been a keynote speaker for the Holy See during the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, addressing education, women and work, caregiving, and gender ideology. She also serves as a consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family, Life and Youth and recently testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee against the Equality Act.
Mary is the co-author of several books on education, and her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, First Things, the National Catholic Register and Our Sunday Visitor, among others.
Mary and her husband Seamus Hasson have seven grown children and two grandchildren.
MARIA KEFFLER
PM Session
What Can Parents Do?
Maria Keffler, is a co-founder of Advocates Protecting Children, Partners for Ethical Care and the Arlington Parent Coalition (Virginia). An author, speaker, and teacher with a background in educational psychology, Ms. Keffler has fought to support families and protect children from unethical activism and dangerous policies around sexuality and transgender ideology since 2018. She is the author of multiple books, including Desist, Detrans & Detox: Getting Your Child Out of the Gender Cult.
Ms. Keffler lives in Arlington, Virginia (USA), with her husband and three teenage children.
SAMANTHA KELLEY
AM Session
The Amazing Design of Our Bodies
Samantha Kelley is the Founder and current President of FIERCE Athlete Inc. She played Division 1 Soccer at UConn and is currently involved in competitive rowing. She has spent the last 10 years working for Catholic nonprofits and outreaching to female athletes. She graduated with a Masters in Catholic Psychology, holds certification in Strength & Conditioning and has extensively studied the Theology of the Body.
It was actually through the teachings of Theology of the Body and the Catholic Church that she has discovered what it means to be both feminine and athletic. These teachings have the power to heal and through FIERCE Athlete she desires to share those truths with female athletes and women across the world.
Deacon Patrick Lappert
AM Session
Medical Considerations in
Transgender Treatment
Deacon Patrick Lappert, M.D., is a board-certified Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon who has been in practice for over 25 years. He is also board certified as a General Surgeon. He served as a Reconstructive Surgeon in the U.S. Navy. He was the Chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital, as well as the Reconstructive Surgery Specialty Leader for the Surgeon General, USN. He founded the Pediatric Cranio-facial Reconstructive Surgery Unit, as well as the Wound Care Center for the largest military hospital in the world. Dr. Lappert retired from the Navy with the rank of Captain (USN) after 24 years of service.
Dr. Lappert grew up in a Jewish home but spent most of his life as an atheist. At the age of 40 he converted and was baptized. He has gone on to become an ordained Deacon, serving and preaching at his church in Decatur, Alabama. Dr. Lappert travels extensively, offering presentations on the ethics of transgender medicine, and gender ideology in light of the western tradition. He has published papers on cancer and trauma reconstruction, as well as writing book chapters on these subjects.
Dr. Lappert has been married to Patrice Ann Oberst for 39 years. Together they raised 6 children, and now have one grandchild.
FR. TAD PACHOLCZYK
PM Session
Welcoming in Truth and Charity:
The Church’s Authentic Teaching on
Transgender Issues
Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D., currently serves as the Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia and directs the Center’s National Catholic Certification Program in Health Care Ethics. He is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. He writes and speaks widely on bioethics and medical ethics.
Since 2001, he has given several hundred presentations and invited lectures, and participated in debates and roundtables on contemporary bioethics throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. He has taught bioethics classes for seminarians at St. John’s Seminary in Boston, Pope St. John XXIII Seminary in Weston, Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in St. Louis, St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia, the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. and Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Connecticut.
As an undergraduate Fr. Tad earned degrees in philosophy, biochemistry, molecular cell biology, and chemistry, and did laboratory research on hormonal regulation of the immune response. He later earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Yale University, where he focused on cloning genes for neurotransmitter transporters which are expressed in the brain. He worked for several years as a molecular biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Father Tad studied for 5 years in Rome at both the Gregorian University and the Lateran University, where he did advanced work in dogmatic theology and in bioethics, examining the question of delayed ensoulment of the human embryo.
He has testified before members of the Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Virginia and Oregon State Legislatures during deliberations over stem cell research and cloning. He writes a monthly newspaper column on bioethics that is nationally syndicated to more than 40 diocesan newspapers in the U.S., and which has also been carried by newspapers in England, Poland and Australia. He has done commentaries for numerous media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, CNN International, ABC World News Tonight, National Public Radio, the Wall Street Journal, the Dallas Morning News, and the New York Times.
JEREMY SAMEK
PM Session
PA Government & School Policy:
How to Have an Impact on Your Community
ONE (1) SUBSTANTIVE CONTINUING LEGAL EDUCATION CREDIT AVAILABLE
Jeremy Samek serves as Senior Counsel with Pennsylvania Family Institute and the Independence Law Center, where he plays an integral role on the legal and legislative policy team. Since joining the staff in May 2015, Samek’s legal efforts have focused on the protection of religious liberty, protecting human life, strengthening the family, and the elimination of sex trafficking. Samek believes that religious liberty is the cornerstone of all freedoms.
Prior to joining, he gave lectures on religious liberty issues, counseled non-profit and religious institutions, and worked pro bono on religious liberty cases in Federal District Court and the United States Supreme Court while he was an attorney at Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, LLC in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Aside from pro
bono religious liberty work, Jeremy represented clients in federal and state courts in commercial litigation, consumer protection, OSHA, US Customs, and product liability disputes.
Jeremy was also a Staff Sergeant in the United States Air Force Reserve, working in the Air Transportation Logistics field. In 2005, he was deployed to Kuwait in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and, in 2006, he was deployed to Kyrgyzstan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
He is the vice-president of the Western Pennsylvania Christian Legal Society chapter, a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association Civil and Equal Rights Committee, and a former elected public school board member at a Western Pennsylvania school district.
Jeremy received his J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 2006, where he served as an articles editor for the University of Pittsburgh Law Review. He earned his B.A. from Liberty University, magna cum laude in 2003. He received the Liberty Debate Team Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012.
Jeremy and his wife have five children.
Admissions: U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, U.S. District Courts for the Western, Middle, and Eastern Districts of Pennsylvania, Court of International Trade, Pennsylvania