Kresta in the Afternoon

The South Carolina legislature has given final approval to a bill that would ban abortions after 6 weeks of pregnancy. Clare Kosmalski joins us with a review of this and other pro-life news.

Substance abuse is the 3rd-leading cause of death in the United States, claiming more than 175.000 lives every year – and the crisis has accelerated since the pandemic. Many contemporary therapists overlook the fact that addiction isn’t just a physical and physiological illness – it’s a spiritual disease that requires spiritual remedy. Keaton Douglas joins us with more.

Human rights champion Jimmy Lai has suffered another defeat at the hands of the Chinese court. Despite the fact that he is a UK citizen, he has been denied access to a UK human rights lawyer as he faces charges under Beijing’s National Security Law. We talk more about this, as well as the upcoming Acton University, with Fr. Robert Sirico.

We have all been given a vocation, but we aren’t all called to the priesthood or religious life. For comedian Jeremy McLellan, making people laugh is a vocation. He talks more with us – and you can meet him on the Good News Cruise.

On Friday evening the Nebraska legislature passed a bill that bans abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy and prohibits gender transitioning procedures on kids under the age of 19. Governor Jim Pillen signed the bill into law yesterday. We’ll talk more about it with Marion Miner.

In the last few weeks we’ve seen the passing of two very different, yet very influential religious figures. On April 28, Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, died at 88. And on Friday, Presbyterian minister and author Tim Keller died at 72. While both these men made their mark outside the visible boundaries of the Church, they still left legacies we can benefit from. Al shares more.

You may have heard about Matt Walsh’s film “What is a Woman,” in which he challenges people to define the meaning of female. This question of gender – who we are as men and women – has never been more pressing or more misunderstood. Abigail Favale joins us to trace the roots of the issue and how gender is reshaping our language, our society, and our own self-perceptions.

Have you ever been told that the Catholic Church is “obsessed” with Sex? That the Church could help the world more if it focused less on people’s personal sexual preferences and more on issues such as promoting peace or combatting poverty? Well, it’s not the Church that is preoccupied with sex – it’s the world. Al discusses this issue through the lens of recent comments by the German bishops.

For a large part of American history, it was widely believed that one could not be a good Catholic and a good American, as you would have to choose between loyalty to country and loyalty to the pope. Catholics play an important role in the American story - but we often make the mistake of seeing them as one, cohesive unit. In fact, Catholic immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Italy and other nations all had vastly different experiences that came to define what it means to be an American Catholic. Dr. Christopher Shannon explains how.

Christ has established the Church on earth and with its rich array of sacraments, prayers and teachings it is fertile ground for profound Christian conversion. But no true conversion is purely spiritual. It must bear fruit in our daily lives. Fr. Robert Spitzer returns with a further look at moral transformation, drawing from everything from the Writings of Ignatius to Modern Psychology.