Kresta in the Afternoon

A piece in Slate magazine last year claimed that the religious right did not originally form around the pro-life cause; it formed over support for segregation. But if you examine the early years of the pro-life movement, long before Roe was settled, you see just how ridiculous this is. We talk more with Daniel Williams.

In this Sunday’s Gospel Jesus tells us that we must take up our cross and follow him, and details exactly what that means. The Ignatian study Bible calls it a striking example of the demands and consequences of discipleship – we talk more about it with Peggy Stanton.

In May 1999, Rachel Muha experienced a parent’s worst nightmare. Her son Brian and his friend Aaron, students at Franciscan University, were kidnapped, tortured and murdered. Even before her son’s body was found, she publicly forgave her killers – and her attitude set the tone for everything that followed. Gretchen Crowe shares more.

The Catholic Church in Germany is facing an unprecedented crisis, with more than half a million baptized Catholics leaving the Church in 2022, according to figures released today by the German Bishops’ Conference. We look at the roots of the problem with Matthew Bunson.

On June 19, Pope Francis marked the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and philosopher who remains one of the most important thinkers in the Western tradition. In his apostolic letter Sublimitas et Miseria Hominis, the Holy Father praises Pascal as a “tireless seeker of truth.” We talk more about Pascal’s Wager and his legacy with Andrew Petiprin.

Is Pope Francis “undermining” the Church? Judging by some fundraising emails Al has received recently, some people seem to think so. What is an effective way to express concern about the Papacy? Al discusses.

On June 22, the feasts of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, the USCCB kicked off Religious Freedom Week. Over the last several years the Supreme Court has vindicated Religious Liberty several times – but Helen Alvare thinks there is still work to be done. She joins us.

For most of last week, the mainstream press devoted nearly round-the-clock coverage to the search for the Titan submersible, on which five people perished en route to the wreck of the Titanic. That same week, hundreds of migrants died when their boat sank off the coast of Greece, a tragedy that received little attention. Some have blamed the disproportionate coverage on racism and classism – but what does it actually tells us about the nature of news media? Al discusses.

Despite the fact that most of the world is religious, and a huge percentage of it is Christian, Hollywood’s imaginative energies often leave religion out of the picture. When it comes to movies, Christian characters tend to be caricatures and fall into a few predictable categories. We’ll talk more about it with Samuel James.

Although the instrumentum laboris for October’s Synod of Bishops makes clear that it “is not a document of the Church’s Magisterium,” it clearly has something to say, propose, and arguably teach about the kind of synodal Church that Pope Francis has made such a priority of his pontificate — and perhaps about far more. We take a closer look with Stephen White.