Today on Kresta - January 4, 2010

Talking about the "things that matter most" on Jan. 4

4:00 – Kresta Comments: End of the World Set for May 21, 2011?
If there had been time, Marie Exley would have liked to start a family. Instead, the 32-year-old Army veteran says she has less than six months left, which she'll spend spreading a stark warning: Judgment Day is almost here. Exley is part of a movement of Christians loosely organized by radio broadcasts and websites, independent of churches and convinced by their reading of the Bible that the end of the world will begin May 21, 2011. To get the word out, they're using billboards and bus stop benches, traveling caravans of RVs and volunteers passing out pamphlets on street corners. Al has some comments.

4:20 - Green Bay bishop becomes first in US to approve Marian apparitions
Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay has approved the Marian apparitions seen by Adele Brise in 1859, making the apparitions of Mary that occurred some 18 miles northeast of Green Bay the first in the United States to receive approval of a diocesan bishop. Bishop Ricken made the announcement during Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help Dec. 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. More than 250 invited guests filled the shrine chapel to hear Bishop Ricken read the official decree on the authenticity of the apparitions. He also issued a second decree, formally approving the shrine as a diocesan shrine. We talk about this apparition with Jimmy Akin of Catholic Answers.

4:40 – Father John Harvey, founder of Courage, dead at 92
Father John Harvey, the founder of the Courage apostolate, died on December 27 in Maryland at the age of 92. Born in Philadelphia, John Harvey made his first vows as an Oblate of St. Frances de Sales in 1938, and was ordained in 1944. In 1980, with encouragement from Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York, Father Harvey founded Courage, a group dedicated to helping loyal Catholics cope with a same-sex attraction, living chastely in accordance with Church teachings. Under his leadership Courage grew to include more than 100 chapters around the world. Father Harvey is the author of The Homosexual Person. He remained active as director of Courage until 2008, when at the age of 90 he handed over leadership responsibilities to Father Paul Check. He appeared many times on Kresta in the Afternoon and we take this opportunity to pay him tribute.

5:00 - Catholic Hospitals vs. the Bishops: Administrators shop for theologians to support practices that conflict with church teachings
The severing of ties two weeks ago between the Catholic Church and St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix, Ariz., is the latest example of the fraying relationship between the bishops and Catholic hospital administrators. In recent years, some Catholic hospitals have taken greater liberties, authorizing abortions and sterilization procedures that the church strictly prohibits. Earlier this year, for instance, Bishop Robert Vasa, bishop of the Diocese of Baker, Ore., ended the church's sponsorship of St. Charles Medical Center in Bend over the hospital's performance of tubal ligations. But the Phoenix case breaks new ground. In explaining his decision, Bishop Thomas Olmsted, bishop of the Phoenix Diocese, was the first to explicitly point to the role played by Catholic theologians in providing theological cover for "a litany of practices in direct conflict with Catholic teachings." Anne Hendershott is here to look at how administrators are shopping for theologians to support practices that conflict with Church teachings.

5:20 – Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child
Play dates, “helicopter parenting,” No Child Left Behind, video games, political correctness: these and other insidious trends in child rearing and education are now the hallmarks of childhood. As author Anthony Esolen demonstrates in his elegantly written, often wickedly funny new book, almost everything we are doing to children now constricts their imaginations, usually to serve the ulterior motives of the constrictors. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child takes square aim at these accelerating trends, while offering parents—and children—hopeful alternatives. Esolen shows how imagination is snuffed out at practically every turn: in the rearing of children almost exclusively indoors; in the flattening of love to sex education; in the loss of traditional childhood games; in the refusal to allow children to organize themselves into teams; in the dismissal of the power of memory, which creates the worst of all possible worlds in school—drudgery without even the merit of imparting facts; in the strict separation of the child’s world from the adult’s; and in the denial of the transcendent, which places a low ceiling on the child’s developing spirit and mind. Anthony joins us.