Today on Kresta - July 14, 2010

Talking about the "things that matter most" on July 14

4:00 – Kresta Comments – The Demographics of Islam

4:20 – The Mystery of Predestination: According to Scripture, the Church, and St Thomas Aquinas
How can an all-loving God choose some people for eternal salvation while permitting others to fall away? Doesn't God offer the same amount of saving grace to everyone? Isn't predestination a Protestant doctrine? Author and apologist John Salza seeks to answer these questions, and others, about that most ineffable and confounding of Christian beliefs: that God chooses to infallibly direct certain people to salvation but not others. Drawing deeply upon Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, Salza says that a proper Catholic understanding of the doctrine of predestination is interconnected with two other central mysteries: the ability of mankind to choose freely to accept or reject God's saving grace, and the inability of mankind to accept God's grace without first being moved by His grace from within.

5:00 – Fired for Presenting Church Teaching While Teaching a Class on the Catholic Church?
Alliance Defense Fund attorneys have sent a letter to University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign officials on behalf of a popular, highly regarded professor who was fired for explaining the position of the Roman Catholic Church on human sexual behavior to members of his Introduction to Catholicism class. A university cannot censor professors’ speech--including classroom speech related to the topic of the class--merely because certain ideas ‘offend’ an anonymous student. Dr. Kenneth Howell, who had been teaching at the university since 2001, was relieved of his duties based in part on an anonymous complaint sent via e-mail to university officials. The e-mail was sent by the friend of an anonymous student who claimed to be “offended” by Howell. Ken joins us with his attorney, Jordan Lawrence.

5:40 – Kresta Comments – The Demographics of Islam