Today on Kresta - March 16, 2011

Talking about the "things that matter most" on March 16

4:00 – Kresta Comments – God and Natural Disasters
Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti Earthquake, the Indonesia Tsunami, The Japan Tsunami. After all of these tragic events, the question is always raised; "Why does God allow natural disasters?" As we see in Deuteronomy, James and Numbers, God sometimes causes natural disasters as a judgment against sin. So is every natural disaster a punishment from God? Al has some answers to these questions being asked right now.

4:20 – The Nuclear Threat in Japan
The first American researcher to investigate the Chernobyl reactor meltdown on site, along with Russian and Ukrainian scientists in the years after that disaster, says what's happening in Japan has not reached the magnitude of Chernobyl yet. Dr. Alexander Sich says the closer comparison is Three Mile Island. But he says he IS concerned about reported levels of radiation leaking from crippled reactors. Dr. Sich joins us.

4:40 – Kresta Comments – The US House Hearings on Muslim Radicalization in America and Rep. Keith Ellison's Disingenuous Testimony
Last week Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) testified at a hearing on Islamic radicalism by weeping his way through a speech about whata-buncha-nasty-bigots Americans are. He chose as his case in point Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a Pakistani-born Muslim American who rushed to lower Manhattan on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, to assist in rescue efforts, and died in the collapse of the World Trade Center. Did his account check out with reality? We have the tape and the facts.

5:00 – The Power of the Sacraments
In her own inspiring style, Sr. Briege McKenna explores the marvelous ways God acts through the sacraments, and explains how nothing can substitute for the grace of receiving the grace of the sacraments. The book is entitled The Power of the Sacraments and Sr. Breige is here to discuss it.

5:20 – The Problem of Genesis
One of the most important principles of Catholic Biblical interpretation is that the reader of the Scriptural texts must be sensitive to the genre or literary type of the text with which he is dealing. Just as it would be counter-indicated to read Moby Dick as history or "The Waste Land" as social science, so it is silly to interpret, say, "The Song of Songs" as journalism or the Gospel of Matthew as a spy novel. By the same token, it is deeply problematic to read the opening chapters of Genesis as a scientific treatise. So why is it so common for people to struggle with the seemingly bad science that is on display in the opening chapters of the first book of the Bible? Fr. Robert Barron answers the question.

5:40 – Benedict's Creative Minority
Sam Gregg