Twenty-four Catholic professionals from the Chicagoland area attended the second meeting of the Catholic Professionals’ Group at LaCasa Margarita featuring guest speaker Dan Proft. Proft is an entrepreneur, writer, former Republican candidate for Governor, and radio talk show host for WLS in Chicago, where he co-hosts a show from 5-9 am each morning with Bruce Wolf. Fr. Kevin Baldwin opened with a Gospel Reflection on the Beatitudes with the warning that we should expect and be ready to be persecuted for living out the Gospel. That was the way of the early Christians and martyrs and will be ours as well…if we’re living it right. Proft communicated a similar message, referring to Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address of 1860, noting how the southern slave owners, like the abortionists of today, weren’t content until slavery covered all territories. Lincoln concluded his speech with an even higher call: “Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.” Proft works as a Senior Fellow at the Illinois Policy Institute, a free market think tank in Chicago. He also serves on the Board of Directors for both the Disabled Patriot Fund, a non-profit that provides assistance to Illinois military families, and Freedom to Learn-Illinois, a non-profit that provides private elementary school scholarships to disadvantaged children in Chicago.