Today on Kresta - June 16, 2011

Talking about the "things that matter most" on June 16

4:00 – Subsidiarity and Serving the Poor
As a former Marxist, Ismael Hernandez has a unique view of subsidiarity and serving the poor. He is here to define a Catholic understanding of subsidiarity, apply it to the context of human spiritual, moral, and material need, and elaborate on the unique ability of private charity to address such needs using local knowledge and resources unavailable and unsuited to public agencies.

4:20 – Envy and the Search for Fairness in Our Economic Relationships
In a free-market system, participants are free to pursue exchanges that lead to their mutual benefit. Yet market economies do not lead to equal outcomes, even though the same rules apply to all participants. Using St. Thomas Aquinas's definition of envy as a starting point, Victor Claar is here to critically examine the potentially corrosive role that envy may play in our relationships in a market economy.

4:45 – Holy Family Radio – Grand Rapids
Holy Family Radio in Grand Rapids first went on the air Christmas day 2010, and this past March 19th – the feast of St. Joseph – they began airing live Catholic programming from EWTN and Ave Maria Radio, along with some local programming for the Hispanic community in West Michigan. Their mission is to broadcast the knowledge, love and practice of the Roman Catholic Faith. As we are broadcasting from Grand Rapids this week, we talk to Larry Nienhaus about his work with Holy Family Radio.

5:00 – Nietzsche’s Critique of Christianity
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is well-known for his scathing insights on the death of God, slave morality and the spiritual baseness of the masses, many of which have been appropriated by easy-going, agnostic egalitarians and turned into liberal critiques of liberalism. Kishore Jayabalan joins us to restate Nietzsche’s views on the corrupting influences of modernity and what we, his avowed enemies as Christian advocates of the free market, can learn from him.

5:30 – Biblical and Theological Foundations of Authentic Environmentalism
Jay Richards draws on Scripture and historical Christian theology to ground the Christian understanding of the relationship between humanity and non-human creation. He contrasts pre-modern, early-modern, and contemporary understandings of relevant passages of Scripture. He outlines implications for environmental ethics arising from various categories of biblical and systematic theology. He is here today to discuss the Biblical and Theological Foundations of Authentic Environmentalism.