Kresta in the Afternoon

In the Sunday summer Mass readings of Liturgical Cycle Year B, we see prefigurements of the Eucharist in the First Readings, and their fulfillment in the proclamation of the Gospel.  In last Sunday’s First Reading, the prophet Elisha fed a hundred men with only 20 barley loaves and a sack of grain.  In upcoming Sundays, God provides the Israelites with manna in the desert, and then Elijah is sustained for forty days and forty nights on a simple meal of a jug of water and a hearth cake.  In the process, we’ll also hear the Bread of Life Discourse in John’s Gospel over several weeks.

Curtis Mitch is a writer and research fellow for the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.  He has been a contributor to the popular apologetics series Catholic for a Reason, has co-authored a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew in the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture series, and is the principle annotator and associate editor of the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible.

The past two weeks in the Church have been busy news weeks.  Last week, news broke that the top, non-episcopal cleric in the United States was frequently using the gay hookup app, Grindr.  And now how officials at the Holy See in Vatican City are on edge re: the same.  Ed Condon from the Pillar joins us to discuss of these matters.

Ed Condon is the co-founder of the Pillar, an investigative Catholic news outlet.  He is also a licensed canon lawyer.  You can follow him on Twitter @CanonLawyerEd and find the Pillar at PillarCatholic.com.

In 2018, The Atlantic reported: “Priests are fielding more requests than ever for help with demonic possession.” Indeed, exorcists – even the Pope himself – are reporting an unprecedented spike in demonic activities.  And yet, aside from what we see in Hollywood films, how many Americans really understand what an exorcism is?  Monsignor Stephen Rossetti joins us to share his experiences as an American exorcist.

Msgr. Stephen J. Rossetti is a priest in the Diocese of Syracuse and a research associate professor at the Catholic University of America. He is a licensed psychologist and has been the Chief Exorcist for the Archdiocese of Washington for over 13 years. He is the author of many books, most recently the Diary of an American Exorcist; he writes particularly on priestly formation and spirituality. He currently heads the St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal, whose ministry involves exorcisms, deliverance praying and the support and renewal of priestly spirituality.

Solanus Casey was a Franciscan simplex priest in Detroit who was loved and admired by many for his love of the poor and his spiritual direction.  He died in 1957.  In 1995, Pope Saint John Paul II declared him venerable.  After a miraculous healing was attributed to him in 2015, Pope Francis declared him “Blessed” and he was beatified at Ford Field in Detroit in 2017.  His feast day is today. Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit joins us to talk about the life of Solanus Casey.

Archbishop Allen Vigneron is the fifth Archbishop of Detroit and he has been serving in that role since 2009.  Since 2019, he has also been serving in the role of vice-President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Blessed Stanley Rother was a priest in the Diocese of Oklahoma City who became a missionary to rural Guatamala.  Around the feast of St. James, Stanley was martyred.  Maria Scaperlanda, someone who has worked on his cause for canonization and written a biography of Blessed Rother,  joins guest host Matthew Bunson to discuss his life and his cause for canonization.

Recently, President Biden announced he was going to make sure the COVID-19 vaccine was required for all active duty military members.  Other organizations, including some Catholic colleges and universities, have chosen to do the same for their members.  Is this considered ethical?  Will it even help curb the spread of COVID-19?  Dr. Steve Doran, a neurologist, a bioethics in the Archdiocese of Omaha, and a member of the State of Nebraska's COVID-19 Task Force, joins guest host Matthew Bunson to discuss this.

This week is National Natural Family Planning Awareness Week.  Catherine Hadro from EWTN Pro-Life Weekly joins guest host Matthew Bunson to discuss abortion, natural family planning, and where we are fifty-eight years after Humanae Vitae.

Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been criminally charged in Massachusetts for sexually abusing a teenage boy in the 1970s.  EWTN News Washington correspondent Matt Hadro joins guest host Matthew Bunson to discuss this breaking news.

Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh knew they were putting their lives on the line. Islamic laws in Iran forbade them from sharing their Christian beliefs, but in three years, they’d covertly put New Testaments into the hands of twenty thousand of their countrymen and started two secret house churches. In 2009 they were caught, arrested and sentenced to death. They share their story.

The Epistle of James has long been a reminder that the Tree of Life—Christ’s Cross and Gospel—was planted in rich, Jewish soil.  Shane Kapler gives us a look at the epistle through the eyes of its first-century Jewish-Christian readers, unpacking its lavish content and showing how this inspired text has yielded, century after century, abundant fruit for the Church.

Shane Kapler is the author of James: Jewish Roots, Catholic Fruits. He has spent many years working in evangelism and catechesis within the Archdiocese of St. Louis. His previously published works include The Epistle of the Hebrews and the Seven Core Beliefs of Catholics, Marrying the Rosary to the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and Through, With, and In Him.  Visit him at explainingchristianity.com