Here’s today’s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture.

Fr. Emil Kapaun recognized as an American hero. The event will happen tomorrow (April 11) when Kapaun’s family, surviving military comrades and others will gather at the White House as President Barack Obama awards the legendary chaplain the Medal of Honor posthumously. The priest, who is also being considered for sainthood, was an amazing inspiration to his fellow prisoners of war during the Korean War. More here.

Kapaun’s remarkable story is documented in the book The Miracle of Father Kapaun: Priest, Soldier and Korean War Hero by journalists Roy Wenzl and Travis Heying. The book details why Protestants, Jews and Muslims who either served with him say he did more to save lives and maintain morale than any other man they know.

The book also covers possible miracles (i.e. healings), witnessed by non-Catholic doctors and attributed by some to Father Kapaun’s intercession, which are being investigated by the Vatican as a necessary step in the process of canonization. More about The Miracle of Father Kapaun: Priest, Soldier and Korean War Hero here.
BTW, a movie doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

From the network that brings you The American Bible Challenge…From RealScreen: It Takes a Church is being developed for GSN by Sean Kelly. The show sees the congregation of a church going on a mission to find love for one of its single parishioners. “The congregation, Pastor, friends, and family will all contribute, but in the end our single will decide which suitor she is putting her faith in,” the network said. “The parishioner who brought the chosen suitor will win money for both themselves and their charity.”

Don’t let the antenna hit you on the way out. From Broadcasting & Cable: Fox’s affiliates are vital to the network’s broadcast model, said Chase Carey, president and COO of News Corp., but at the same time, Fox will consider scrapping the free model if the legal system does not force live streaming outfits such as Aereo to pay to transmit Fox’s signal…”We will not sit idly by and let people steal our signal,” he said…”We have no choice but to develop business solutions that ensure we continue to remain in the driver’s seat of our own destiny.  One option could be converting the Fox broadcast network to a pay channel, which we would do in collaboration with both our content partners and affiliates.”
The issue as succinctly framed by The New York Times: Aereo, which scoops up the free signals of local television stations and streams them to the phones and computers of paying subscribers. Because Aereo cuts off the stations from the retransmission fees that they have grown to depend on, they are determined to shut down the service — even, the station owners say, if they have to take their signals off the airwaves to do so.

IMHO: This is pretty much the definition of chutzpa. Isn’t it through those very transmission fees that the networks — broadcast and cable — have been using to rip off the public for years? Under the cable model, consumers, in order to get access to the few channels they might actually find worthwhile, are forced to pay money to networks they don’t want to watch and may even actively offend and insult their values. Now, for my money (and I do mean my money), that’s a lot closer theft than anything Aereo is doing.

As I wrote the other day, TV’s bundling and demographic system smacks of a cultural scam designed to override and undermine the tastes and values of the general public.

Encourage one another and build each other up – 1 Thessalonians 5:11