ARTICLES

No Politics, No Sports, No Soap Opera

CATHOLIC ANSWERS LIVE

By Tim Ryland

1. Can non-Catholics go to a Catholic priest for confession?

2. Did Henry the VIII marry his own daughter?

3. If someone who has been excommunicated by his bishop moves to another diocese, is he still excommunicated?

4. Can a non-Catholic wife be buried beside her husband in a Catholic cemetery?

5. Did the practice of eating fish on Fridays stem from the fact that many of the 12 disciples were fishermen and they were trying to drum up business?

6. Doesn't the doctrine of the Virgin Birth amount to saying Mary was a surrogate mother?

7. Is there a Vatican dress code for visitors?

On a Tuesday afternoon in June, Catholic Answers president Karl Keating sits at a microphone and answers these questions, and many more, before a worldwide audience. It is Keating's weekly open forum on "Catholic Answers Live," the San Diego apologetics group's latest and most far-reaching evangelization effort, which airs Monday through Friday, 3 to 4 p.m. Pacific standard time.

"I'd thought vaguely over the years of [getting into radio]," Keating says. "But Phil [Lenahan, Catholic Answers's vice president of operations] pushed it as much as anyone else." Lenahan had told me earlier that the boss had needed a lot of convincing, and Keating admits it's true. "What convinced me was the practicality of the proposal put together by Phil and others last year -- we'd been able to get enough of a sense of outside interest."

In early 1997 Catholic Answers turned to 35-year-old Jerry Usher, who was living in Reno, Nevada, where he had helped put together a Catholic radio station from scratch. Keating's organization needed no introduction to Usher. A decade earlier, during his re-conversion to Catholicism, he got his hands on some Catholic Answers tracts. "I devoured them," he says. "Then I got a copy of Catholicism and Fundamentalism [Keating's first book, published in 1986] and devoured that too. I began subscribing to their newsletter."

Usher agreed to act as a consultant and in June last year flew down to San Diego for a day. "They wanted to know, 'Are we on the right track?'" Usher recalls. "'How much money is it going to take? What kind of equipment?'" Usher came up with an estimated cost to get up and running: $25,000 to $30,000. Trouble was, even assuming they could afford the equipment, no one at the apologetics group had an inkling how to run a radio show.

"As Jerry helped us develop the program, we saw his talents," Keating says. There was no one else on the horizon to act as the show's host. "We really started lobbying for him to come on board."

Usher, however, has another deadline. More than halfway to the priesthood, Usher left formation in 1995 "to discern more precisely where God wanted me to go." Through a friend in Portland, Oregon, Usher was hired as program director of a Catholic radio station, and from there moved to Reno. In late summer last year he agreed to join Catholic Answers with the understanding that he would leave in September 1998 to finish seminary with the Companions of the Cross, an order based in Ottawa, Canada.

So the host was hired, the equipment in place, and the affiliates lined up; the only problem was money. "There was a payment on receipt for about $20,000 worth of equipment due in ten days," Usher says. "Three days later, out of the blue, we got a check from a donor -- for $20,000."

Keating: "It was from a widow, her husband's life insurance proceeds. Later her house burned down, and we offered to return the money, but she insisted we keep it."

Since its inception last November, "Catholic Answers Live" has aired on 23 commercial stations nationwide -- from Portland to San Francisco to St. Louis to Boston to Jacksonville Beach, Florida -- and is heard worldwide, via both the Internet (www.catholic.com) and shortwave radio (EWTN Global Catholic Radio). Tuesdays are the open forums. The other shows usually have a theme, with guest experts such as Scott Hahn, Curtis Martin, Janet Smith, William Donahue, and Father Benedict Groeschel.

At the Catholic Answers Kearny Mesa facility, in the 15-by-15-foot room that has been converted into a radio studio, a clock on the wall marks the minutes to airtime. Break times for taped promotional announcements are marked on the clock face in pink pie wedges from 10 to 13 minutes and 26 to 29 minutes after the hour. A large conference table with microphones and headsets dominates the room. In an adjacent office, staff apologist James Akin screens phone calls and types callers' names and the topics they wish to discuss. This information appears on a monitor for the host and guest. Joe Dahlin, the show's producer/engineer, runs through some last-minute checks on the equipment in the rack next to him: high-speed phone lines, mixing board, an audio editor to fade in and out of the promotions and theme music, and a delay machine to guard against on-air indiscretions.

A few minutes before airtime, Keating wanders in from his office down the hall. He chats briefly with Usher, then they don their headsets and take their places at the mikes. The timing must be exact for the affiliates who carry the broadcast live. Dahlin counts down the final seconds with his fingers in the air and at 3 p.m. sharp the theme music (Yanni) starts up.

Jerry Usher's smooth baritone voice fills the headset I've put on. He explains the open forum concept and says they welcome all topics with a caveat: "No politics, no sports, and -- " he glances at Keating and they say the last phrase in unison, with emphasis -- "no soap opera."

They first field several questions that have been submitted via e-mail. Usher reads the questions and Keating answers them, glancing occasionally at the brief notes he's set out on the table in front of him. When they start taking phone calls, though Keating knows in advance from the monitor the topic each caller wants to discuss, he answers the majority of questions off the top of his head, sometimes hawking Catholic Answers material to those who want to know more. Six minutes into the show Akin bustles in and hands Keating a couple of pages from Pope Pius XI's 1930 encyclical on chastity in marriage, Casti Connubi, which Akin has annotated to help answer a caller's technical question about contraception. During the first break, Keating decides to let Akin field the question off-air, since contraception was the topic of the previous day's show on which Akin was the guest expert.

Usher moves the show along, steering callers, politely ending discussions that start to bog down, interjecting a theological comment here and there. Keating, Usher, and Dahlin pass notes back and forth like kids in school, nodding and smiling. When three callers in a row ignore Usher's greeting and say, "Hello, Mr. Keating," the host scribbles a note and holds it up to Keating and Dahlin: "What am I, chopped liver?" Keating breaks up. Fortunately, the caller is speaking at the time and he has time to regroup. Later I ask Keating about Usher.

"Jerry does a magnificent job," he says. "He combines polish at the microphone with a deep knowledge of the Faith." Little more than two months before Usher leaves, a successor has not been chosen.

The next day's show is on a topic dear to Usher's heart: the nature of the priesthood. The guests: Father Benedict Groeschel, who is founder of the Franciscans of the Renewal in the Bronx and a prolific writer and lecturer; and Margaret Hamilton, whose seminarian son, Eugene, by special dispensation granted by Pope John Paul II, was ordained a priest three hours before he died of cancer.

Seven minutes before they go on the air, however, Dahlin turns up the volume on a crucial channel and finds high feedback. He can't figure out what's causing it. "It wasn't there a minute ago," he says.

"We can't go on the air with it like that," Usher replies, his voice tense. He dials up Father Groeschel and Mrs. Hamilton on separate lines from New York, debriefs them, makes notes as to how they want to be introduced. "We're having a little technical difficulty here," he tells them. "Pray that it clears up or we won't be able to do the show." Dahlin fiddles some more, looking stumped.

Then, as quickly as it came, the feedback is gone. Three minutes to spare. Jerry glances across the table, relief on his face. The music comes up, the show goes on without a hitch.

The most rewarding part of the job, says Usher, is "being able to reach people who need to hear the truth of God's message of love." He recounts a show Scott Hahn did on justification. "A guy called and said, 'If I had heard what your guest is saying today, I would have never left the Catholic Church.' Scott jumped on that off the air said, 'Get his phone number.' He sent him some tapes, and that guy is coming back into the Church."

"It seems to me from the questions we're getting many of them are Catholics but are confused," says Keating. "But we get a lot of non-Catholics who call too. It's quite a mix."

Though EWTN's shortwave feed is provided to Catholic Answers at no charge, airtime on the commercial affiliates runs from $50 to $500 a day. To get a ballpark idea of the cost, take the median price -- $275 -- multiply it by the 23 stations currently carrying the show, and the weekly outlay is nearly $36,000.

In late May Keating sent out a solicitation letter claiming a shortfall of nearly $190,000 at Catholic Answers's financial year end on June 30.

"I wish money were no object," Keating says, "but we're willing to run the radio show at a loss so long as other parts of the ministry can cover the deficit."

Answers to questions at the beginning of the article: 1. Yes (in rare instances -- see Canon 844); 2. No (the wife in question was Anne Boleyn, who was 16 years younger than Henry VIII); 3. Yes (as Keating pointed out, similar confusions arise in civil jurisdictions); 4. Yes; 5. No (not really a question but a joke by Usher that Keating answered anyway); 6. No (Keating wouldn't take the question seriously and said the person who had raised it with the caller was only "trying to make a nuisance"); 7. No (dress modestly -- no shorts or halter tops -- but nicely, as you would for church).

For more information, contact Catholic Answers at (619) 541-1131 or P.O. Box 17490, San Diego, CA 92177.