Kresta in the Afternoon

In Matthew Chapter 16, Jesus asks Peter one of the most important questions in history: Who do you say that I am? How would people respond today? Some would say he is a "nice man," others would say he was a prophet but not the Messiah, and some others would even claim he didn't exist. How can we recognize these fakes? Who do we say Christ is? Trent Horn joins us.

Much has been written and studied about the Holocaust. And, like other atrocities, we tend to focus on the crimes and the villains rather than the victims and heroes of the story. During the Nazi regime, citizens all over Europe worked to dismantle the party. Today, we look at the story of the German White Rose resistance and the life of Sophie Scholl. Paul Shrimpton joins us.

Thousands of Catholics have flocked to Portugal for World Youth Day. Among them – the Love family: Al’s daughter Alexis, her husband John and their eight children. Alexis lets us know how it’s going.

We all hunger to live in a more just world and most of us are working in some way or another to promote justice. But what is justice? And does it differ from social justice? Dr. Robert Whaples joins us.

August 6th and 9th are the anniversaries of one of the most controversial decisions of the last century – dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and the success of the film Oppenheimer has brought the debate back to the forefront. What do Catholic Just War principles have to say about the decision? Dr. Steven Long joins us from Ave Maria University.

An Ohio referendum that would increase the threshold needed to adopt future constitutional amendments through ballot initiatives has surpassed a quarter of a million early votes with about two weeks left to go before Election Day. Peter Range has the latest on the abortion fight in Ohio and how you can get involved.

The Russian war in Ukraine is entering its seventeenth month. What was once a daily lead story in mainstream news has been pushed to the back burner as other stories arise. There is nothing Moscow would like better than for us to "Move on." John Burger has talked with Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk about his journey of faith, and he returns today with more of the story.

American politics have traditionally been a fight between competing interests or ideologies. Today there is a new element – fights between competing illusions. People defend their false vision of reality against another false vision of reality, and against reality itself. Dr. Ronald Dworkin joins us.

Yet another Gallup poll shows a continued decline in Americans’ belief in God, heaven and hell. Yet even more significant than the loss of our belief in God is the loss of our sense of God, which John Paul the Great addressed in Evangelium Vitae. This ‘practical atheism’ appears even in Christians’ lives. We talk more with Phil Davignon.

Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of the Church. Today’s Office of Readings gives us a quote from one of his homilies: “All of the Lord’s gifts to mankind are aimed at catching souls and binding them to His love.” Alphonsus stresses that the greatest gift God gave us was his only Son. Marcus Peter, who spent four years with St. Alphonsus’ Redemptorist order, joins us.