Today on Kresta - December 9, 2010

Talking about the "things that matter most" on Dec. 9

4:00 – Embryo: A Defense of Human Life
Typically, right-to-life arguments have been based explicitly on moral and religious grounds. In Embryo, Robert George eschews religious arguments and makes a purely scientific and philosophical case that the fetus, from the instant of conception, is a human being, with all the moral and political rights inherent in that status. As such, stem cell research that destroys a viable embryo represents the unacceptable taking of a human life. George is here to fearlessly grapple with the political, scientific, and cultural consequences arising from his position.

5:00 – The Little Way of Lent: Meditations in the Spirit of St. Therese of Lisieux
While reading the autobiography of St. Thérèse, Fr. Gary Caster had an 'ah ha' moment that transformed his experience of Lent from one of narrow concern over what to give up to one of joyful freedom to enter into the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ. "What struck me," he says, "was her insistence on the way we do things for God and not the things we do for him. It wasn't about what I was offering; it was about why." The daily Lenten meditations in this book—all colored by St. Thérèse's Little Way of Spiritual Childhood—will transform you, too, helping you focus not so much on what you have done to offend God, but on what he has done to redeem you. He joins us as we being this Advent season.

5:20 – Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means for America
The New York Times was once considered the gold standard in American journalism and the most trusted news organization in America, as well as being a great Christian newspaper. Today, it is generally understood to be a vehicle for politically correct ideologies, tattered liberal pieties, and a repeated victim of journalistic scandal and institutional embarrassment. In Gray Lady Down, the hard-hitting follow up to Coloring the News, William McGowan asks who is responsible for squandering the finest legacy in American journalism. Combining original reporting, critical assessment and analysis, McGowan exposes the Times’ obsessions with diversity, “soft” pop cultural news, and countercultural Vietnam-era attitudinizing, and reveals how these trends have set America’s most important news icon at odds with its journalistic mission—and with the values and perspectives of much of mainstream America. He joins us.