“The Bishop’s Radio Hour,” which began just four months ago on Sacramento-area radio station KSMH-AM (1620), places the Diocese of Sacramento in the spotlight as one of the first dioceses nationwide to provide its own programming.

The program, broadcast weekdays from 11 a.m. to 12 noon, features a broad spectrum of topics and guests of interest to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. It is the only locally produced program on KSMH, a non-profit station, owned and operated by Immaculate Heart Radio.

“This may be the unique program in the whole country where the bishop is courageous in lending his name to a program boldly dealing with any issue, as the Catholic Church has done for centuries,” according to Father Walsh.

Recent guests on the program have included Rita Marker, a nationally recognized opponent of physician-assisted suicide; Mother Christine from the Carmelite Monastery of the Holy Family in Georgetown, discussing the visit of the relics of St. Therese of Lisieux; Father John Healy, chaplain at Mercy General Hospital, discussing various life issues; and psychologist Davis Fontes, discussing domestic violence.

Dunning, a former KFBK-AM radio talk show host who has been a columnist for the Davis Enterprise newspaper for the past 30 years, likes the mix of guests and format of the “Bishop’s Hour.”

“At KFBK you were very reliant on phone calls and the exchange going on between you and callers and rarely had guests,” he said. “A strength of this program is having that wide variety of experts who really know the ins and outs of issues.”

Regulars on the show include Father Charles S. McDermott, who in his capacity as diocesan Vicar Episcopal for Theological and Canonical Affairs, provides advice and support to the production team. Father McDermott is often featured on Fridays and offers explanation, clarification or commentary on a wide range of questions concerning the Catholic faith.

Another regular guest is Vincentian Father Tom Lane, chaplain at the Beda Seminary in Rome, who reports on issues affecting the worldwide church.

Dunning, whose relaxed humor and quick wit entertained KFBK listeners in the mid-1990s, is finding Catholic radio a good fit.

“This is the best door ever opened in my life,” he said. “To have the chance to be on the air and not just be able to speak about God and Christ and spiritual matters, but to actually be expected to.”

A member of St. James Parish in Davis where he has lived since the age of five, Dunning’s enjoys relating the fact that due to a slight medical complication in the delivery room, he was literally baptized a Catholic the day he was born.

“I really had no choice on this Catholicism thing,” laughs Dunning, who grew up listening to Notre Dame football games, attending Saturday religion classes and becoming friends with the Irish priests at the Newman Center where his family attended Mass. “That little chapel pulls at my heart every time I pass it,” he noted.

While not claiming to be a theological expert, Dunning says that religion has always been of intellectual interest to him and bristles when people assume his viewpoint is dictated solely by Catholic doctrine.

“Living in a town like Davis where I write a daily column for a newspaper in a pro-choice city and am very much pro-life, you get confronted with your religious values all the time,” he said. “It used to make me mad when issues like the death penalty or abortion would come up and people would say, ‘Oh, you’re Catholic. You’re told what to think.’”

He says listener calls to the radio show range from friendly to hostile to “off-the-wall.”

“The friendly ones are usually just listening. Others are hurt, concerned…very issue-oriented,” Dunning noted. “They don’t understand this Catholic umbrella is pretty big.”

While Dunning is up front interviewing guests on the “Bishop’s Hour,” Father Walsh is quite at home behind the scenes in the control room where his technical expertise and adroit screening of callers are put into play.

Prior to moving to Sacramento to produce the diocesan talk show, Father Walsh had worked for 10 years producing the “Catholic Hour” on KVTO-AM in San Francisco. Just beginning its 51st year on air, the “Catholic Hour” provides devotional programming with contemporary Catholic and Christian music. It is broadcast into several Bay Area dioceses.

From 1993 to 1996 Father Walsh was also a broadcaster for a weekly television newscast of “Apostoleto Radio Cristiana” of Franciscan Friar Productions in San Francisco.

Father Walsh says public response to the “Bishop’s Hour” has been mostly positive throughout the Catholic community.

“We have had some negative reaction due to a misunderstanding in perception that some unorthodox teachings were being aired,” he said. “A great challenge is to get Catholic radio established with good, balanced programming so we’re not far left or far right.”

The show is still building a bank of sponsors within the business community in return for on-air advertising. Plans are already in the works to extend the show an extra hour.

Father Walsh has also begun broadcasting on KSMH a Sunday morning Mass airing weekly from different churches in the diocese. St. Ignatius Parish in Sacramento is the venue for Masses the first two Sundays in February.

Copyright © 2000 Diocese of Sacramento - All Rights Reserved

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