TV Picks 06.28.2009

DAILY

Family Rosary With Sacred Scripture

FAMILYLAND TV “Cling to the Rosary as the creeper clings to the tree — for without Our Lady we cannot stand,” Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta said. At 4 a.m. and noon daily, as well as 7:30 p.m. daily except Sundays and Wednesdays, this show enables families to pray together and meditate on the mysteries, using a Marian and scriptural focus.


SUNDAY

Vespers for the Closing of the Pauline Year

EWTN, CATHOLICTV As the Pauline Year that commemorated the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of St. Paul the Apostle concludes, Pope Benedict XVI will visit the papal basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls to celebrate vespers. EWTN will broadcast the ceremony live at noon. CatholicTV will air it at 8 p.m. and re-air it at noon Monday.


TUESDAY

Civil War Journal

HISTORY This episode, “The Gray Ghost: John Singleton Mosby,” chronicles the Civil War guerrilla tactics of Confederate Col. Mosby’s Partisan Raiders, the 43rd Virginia Cavalry, in the Shenandoah Valley and northern Virginia. Advisory: TV-PG.


WEDNESDAY

St. John Cantius Parish

EWTN At 8 p.m., on EWTN Live, Father Joseph Wolfe interviews Congregation of the Resurrection Father Frank Phillips about the revival of Chicago’s St. John Cantius Parish and the founding of the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius. At 11:30 p.m., the feature St. John Cantius: Restoring the Sacred charts the restoration of the parish church, its Latin and English liturgies, and its devotions, sacred music, treasures of sacred art, and reverence for Catholic heritage and culture.


WEDNESDAY, 10 p.m.

Wide Angle: Crossing

Heaven’s Border

PBS This documentary captures the absolute inhumanity of atheistic communism, as South Korean journalists with hidden cameras follow heroic North Koreans’ desperate attempts to escape to freedom in South Korea or Thailand via China and Laos. Only a few succeed; the rest are shot or sent back to torture and execution. Advisory: TV-PG.


SATURDAY

Yosemite and Yellowstone

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL At 5 p.m. and 8 p.m., Secret Yosemite spotlights that park’s gigantic natural features. At 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., Secret Yellowstone tours that 2-million-acre park, which is larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined.


SATURDAY

The Fourth of July

PBS, NBC At 8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on PBS, A Capitol Fourth celebrates our republic’s Declaration of Independence in 1776 with the National Symphony Orchestra’s annual patriotic concert on the U.S. Capitol’s West Lawn. At 9 p.m. on NBC, Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular features pro-life Jordin Sparks, other singers and a 26-minute, 40,000-shell fireworks extravaganza.

Dan Engler writes from
Santa Barbara, California.