Today on Kresta - October 28, 2011

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

4:00 – “Little Angels”
Discover the joy of learning and faith with this season’s most heavenly new collection! From executive producer Roma Downey (“Touched by an Angel”) comes a fresh, faith-based educational series that children and their parents (and grandparents!) can enjoy together in “LITTLE ANGELS.” “Little Angels” is an animated DVD series created exclusively for preschool-aged children to teach not only practical learning skills, like ABCs and numbers, but also to introduce them to the spiritual, moral and ethical principles of the Bible. Roma joins us.

4:20 – Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life
In Between Heaven and Mirth, Fr. James Martin, SJ, assures us that God wants us to experience joy, to cultivate a sense of holy humor, and to laugh at life’s absurdities—not to mention our own humanity. Father Martin invites believers to rediscover the importance of humor and laughter in our daily lives and to embrace an essential truth: faith leads to joy. Holy people are joyful people, says Father Martin, offering countless examples of healthy humor and purposeful levity in the stories of biblical heroes and heroines, and in the lives of the saints and the world’s great spiritual masters. He shows us how the parables are often the stuff of comedy, and how the gospels reveal Jesus to be a man with a palpable sense of joy and even playfulness. He joins us.

5:00 – Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians: The Religious Roots of Free Societies
The intellectual and political elite of the West is nowadays taking for granted that religion, in particular Christianity, is a cultural vestige, a primitive form of knowledge, a consolation for the poor minded, an obstacle to coexistence. In all influential environments, the widespread watchword is “We are all secular” or “We are all post-religious.” As a consequence, we are told that states must be independent of religious creed, politics must take a neutral stance regarding religious values, and societies must hold together without any reference to religious bonds. We look at why the Christian culture is still the best antidote to the crisis and decline of the West. Marcello Pera is our guest.

5:40 – A House Divided: Broken Homes, Flying Houses, Divorce, and Death in Family Fantasy Films
Steven Greydanus writes in a recent column “I think it was six years ago, coming home from a screening of Zathura, that I started seriously wrestling with the problem of what I’ve come to call the Broken Family Film. On the one hand, marriage and an intact household with father and mother raising children together is and will always be the ideal, the standard, the norm. Divorce has become “normal” in the sense that it is a matter of common experience, but we don’t want it to be normalized in the sense of being accepted as something that just happens and is just an inevitable part of life, something that is nobody’s fault or is all for the best. On the other hand, given the reality of ever larger numbers of children with parents who aren’t married and don’t live together, we can’t expect every family in the movies and TV—even in children’s entertainment—to look like the ideal. Steven joins us to discuss a house divided in film.