Today on Kresta in the Afternoon - November 15, 2011

Talking about the "things that matter most" on Nov. 15

Live From the USCCB Fall Assembly in Baltimore, MD

4:00 – CCHD: Reform and Remaining Issues
For a number of years, there has been concern with the grants that CCHD distributes. There have been specific complaints that grants have been given to organizations working in direct contradiction to Church teaching or organizations that have ties to groups working in direct contradiction to Church teaching. In 2009, several concerned organizations formed the Reform CCHD Now Coalition. Now they have a report on the 2011 recipients of CCHD grants. Lead researcher Rob Gaspar is here.

4:40 – Henry VIII’s “Achievement”
In October, 1536 an army of commoners and gentry advanced from the north of England under banners marked with the Five Wounds of Christ. They were the Pilgrimage of Grace, protesting the Dissolution of the Monasteries and changes in religious practice since Henry VIII’s Reformation Parliament had proclaimed him “Supreme Head and Governor” of the Church. In 1535 there were some 800 monasteries, convents, and friaries with 8,000 monks, nuns and friars; by 1541 there were none. A whole way of life had disappeared and a bulwark of the Catholic faith in England was gone. It was on this day in 1539 that six monks, including two abbots, were hung and quartered that day in 1539 because they opposed the dissolution of the monasteries. Stephanie Mann is here to tell the story.

5:00 – Bishops Committee Pushing Feds to Protect the Defense of Marriage Act
The Obama Administration’s fight against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as between one man and one woman, will undermine marriage and create a serious breach of Church-State relations, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote in a September 20 letter to President Barack Obama. The Administration’s assault on DOMA, Archbishop Dolan said, will “precipitate a national conflict between Church and State of enormous proportions and to the detriment of both institutions. We talk to Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, Chair of the USCCB subcommittee responsible for the protection of DOMA.

5:20 – Servant of God Archbishop Fulton Sheen: His Life and Legacy
In the years since Fulton J. Sheen’s cause for canonization was opened in 2002, the Church has reviewed in depth the teachings of this great preacher and evangelist. Sheen’s reputation for personal sanctity and pastoral zeal is skillfully catalogued here as the author delves into ten areas in which Sheen, through his writings and his talks on radio and TV, has left the world a spiritual legacy of incomparable worth. Thomistic philosopher and professor at the Catholic University of America, prolific writer and pioneer in the use of the media, convert-maker and head of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, and Bishop of Rochester in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, Sheen lived in the religious spotlight for most of his life. We talk to Msgr. Stanley Deptula about the life of Servant of God Fulton Sheen.

5:40 – Feast of St. Albert the Great, Champion of Faith & Reason
Even while he was still alive, Dominican friar Albert of Cologne was widely called Magnus the Great. His contemporaries said St Albert simply knew all there was to know; he was a scientist, theologian, and philosopher; a teacher, preacher, and negotiator; a shrewd shepherd and an unflinching defender of the Faith. The time has come to re-discover St. Albert’s greatness, and to profit from his prodigious wisdom and virtue as did his famous student, St. Thomas Aquinas. Kevin Vost helps us do just that on this, his feast day.