Columbus, North Carolina
Presented by Jason Craig
co-Founder & director at Fraternus
Jason Craig grew up in two homes – sometimes with his mom and sometimes with his dad, but he moved in with his dad full time at age 12. “For a lot of my friends, their father was a blank in their minds,” Jason explains, “They just were not around. But my dad took me in at a critical age and showed me that fathers love and protect their sons. Later it made sense to me that God would send His Son to save me – dads do that for their boys.”
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Jason fell into typical teenage vices, but everything changed after he was mentored by a mature Christian man and led to accept the Christian faith. Jason has been working with youth ever since.
After a failed attempt at showing a Catholic friend why Catholicism was nonsense, Jason became a Catholic, along with his future-wife Katie, who grew up in an atheist home. After being received into the Church, Jason and Katie entered the world of full-time Catholic ministry. However, as Jason applied his knowledge and experience of youth ministry at a Catholic parish he realized that it was the families, especially the fathers that had the greatest impact. During this time Jason joined Justin Biance and Tommy Van Horn in founding Fraternus, and Jason wrote and developed the training and curriculum used today around the country.
Jason has a Masters in Theology and Evangelization from the Augustine Institute, and continues his work from a small farm in rural NC.
His writings on culture, masculinity, and mentoring have appeared on numerous sites like New Advent, Catholic Exchange, and Those Catholic Men, and he has also completed a book on rites of passage for Catholic boys. He is also the Editor in Chief of the Quarterly Magazine Sword & Spade. Jason is also known to staunchly defend his family’s claim to have invented bourbon.
What to expect
(Not your average retreat)
01
A Return to the Basics
The weekend is an entering into a rhythm of life that many of us remember or know intuitively to be good, but somehow the modern world just makes difficult. Step back into reality at a human pace. No cell phones. No social media or email. Just the natural world and your son.
03
Talks for Fathers & Sons
The talks are relevant in our contemporary settings, but are rooted in solid classical Catholic thinking, not fads and buzz words. You will not leave with mere motivation, but with a clear vision of matured masculinity, and the unique role of fathers and sons in the life of faith.
02
Time Sactified in Prayer
Specifically we pray the Rosary and The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary as our common prayer. The Little Office was and is a way that laymen of old entered the rhythms and seasons of the Church’s liturgy, but in a form brief and simple enough to memorize and keep with you in the toil of daily work.
04
It's Not Daycare, plan to be with your son.
At SJF Outings you will be encouraged to focus on being present with your son, not grouping up with adults and letting the boys go play and be supervised by experts. You need to watch him with that ax, not me. We don’t just say that parents – but the father especially – are the primary educators of their children. We run the weekend as if that were true.
