Today on Kresta - April 28, 2009

Talking about the "things that matter most" on Apr. 28

3:00 – TBA

3:20 – Sen. Arlen Spector (R-PA) Jumping the Aisle
Veteran Rep. Sen. Arlen Specter disclosed plans today to switch parties, a move intended to boost his chances of winning re-election next year. "I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans," Specter said in a statement posted on a Web site devoted to Pennsylvania politics and confirmed by his office. With Specter, 79 and in his fifth term, Democrats would have 59 Senate seats. Al Franken could make it 60. PA Political Scientist Paul Kengor is here for the analysis.

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3:40 – Mary Ann Glendon Refuses ND Honor / Notre Dame Alumni Confirm $8.2 Million In Withheld Donations
Former Ambassador to the Vatican and Harvard prof Mary Ann Glendon has declined Notre Dame's prestigious Laetare Medal and will not stand on the same platform with President Obama during the Notre Dame commencement exercise. Fearing that her actions might be misunderstood or interpreted maliciously she publicly released her rejection letter to Fr. Jenkins yesterday. Meanwhile, organizers of ReplaceJenkins.com, an online effort urging alumni and donors to the University of Notre Dame to withhold donations, announced yesterday that they have personally confirmed over $8.2 million in withheld donations as a part of their national outreach effort. Several of the largest gifts include estate bequests to the University that have been removed from donors’ wills. We talk with Greer Hannan, one of the student leaders of NDResponse, and David DiFranco of ReplaceJenkins.com

4:00 – Kresta Comments

4:20 – Mortal Follies: Episcopalians and the Crisis of Mainline Christianity
It's not that the dignified and rarefied old Episcopal Church quit believing in God. It's that the God you increasingly hear spoken of in Episcopal circles is infinitely tolerant and given to sudden changes of mind--not quite the divinity you thought you were reading about in the scriptures. William Murchison is here to tell the story of the Episcopal Church's mad dash to catch up with a secular culture fond of self-expression and blissfully relaxed as to norms and truths. An Episcopal layman, Murchison details how leaders of his church, starting in the late 1960s, looked over the culture of liberation, liked what they saw, and went skipping along with the shifting cultural mood--especially when the culture demanded that the church account for its sins of "heterosexism" and "racism." Episcopalians have blended so deeply into the cultural woodwork that it's hard sometimes to remember that it all began as a divine calling to the normative and the eternal.

5:00 – Testimony
Fr. Ed Fride, pastor of Christ the King Parish in Ann Arbor, MI, has been a Congregationalist, atheist, Charismatic Christian, and more before finding the fullness of faith in the Catholic Church. He is with us to discuss his journey from disbelief, to yearning for truth, to the Catholic Priesthood.