Posted on 09/14/2005 1:48:49 PM PDT by A.A. Cunningham
A nun in full
By George Weigel
Three years ago, when Raymond Arroyo told me that he was going to write the biography of Mother Angelica, the formidable foundress of EWTN, I had to admit to some skepticism. Was there enough of a story there to warrant a full-scale biography? Could an EWTN employee tell the story frankly, fairly, and without premature hagiography?
This past April, in Rome, Raymond gave me a copy of the proofs of his book. Five nights of reading later, my initial skepticism had completely abated. Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles, just published by Doubleday, is a rattling good tale of fear and faith, courage and bulldog tenacity. It’s also high drama from start to finish.
No one in their right mind would have expected Rita Rizzo, whom the world would later know as “Mother Angelica,” to build the first global Catholic media empire. Not to put too fine a point on it, clan Rizzo’s misadventures give the words “dysfunctional family” new depths of meaning. A cruel father and an endlessly neurotic mother weave in and out of a story that, while set in the same period of time, certainly isn’t Going My Way. Nor are her early days in the convent easy for Angelica, as she’s beset by unimaginative superiors, not always sympathetic colleagues, and serious health problems.
None of this suggests capacities that would eventually parallel those of a Rupert Murdoch or Ted Turner — yet that is what Mother Angelica became. How she imagined a global Catholic television empire, the faith with which she built it (coming within an ace of bankruptcy at times), and how she successfully fought off attempts to seize what she had built: it’s quite a compelling story, full of plot twists and turns, and not without its moments of failure. And to his credit, Raymond Arroyo gives us Mother Angelica in full. This is no plaster saint; this is a woman whose shrewd judgment is sometimes blunted by the fierce temper that once led her to pitch a knife at her uncle when she was seventeen.
Still, at the end, what the reader takes away from this book is a deep respect for Mother Angelica’s faith and courage. EWTN’s style of Catholic piety may not be universally appreciated. But no one who cares about the new evangelization should gainsay the accomplishment of this dumpling of a nun who pulled off something the institutional Church in the United States spectacularly failed to manage — the creation of a 24/7 Catholic presence on television.
Raymond Arroyo doesn’t put it quite this way, but one can read the Mother Angelica story as a metaphor for the Catholic situation in the U.S. these past forty years. As in all great periods of reform — and the Second Vatican Council was intended by John XXIII as a reforming Council, a Council to give the Church a new burst of evangelical energy — the post-conciliar period following Vatican II has been filled with tension between the institutional and charismatic elements in the Church: between expanding Church bureaucracies and various forms of spiritual entrepreneurship. Sometimes those tensions can be creative; sometimes they get nasty. It would be difficult to describe the tensions between EWTN and the U.S. bishops’ conference as “creative;” but those tensions, which Arroyo describes without rancor, are, at the very least, instructive — although one can wonder how well the conference has learned the lessons of its expensive failure to create a Catholic presence on television.
There’s also food for thought here as Catholics of both sexes ponder the meaning of John Paul the Great’s Catholic feminism. The most beloved figure in contemporary Catholicism was a woman — Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The most powerful and successful Catholic media mogul of our time is a woman — Mother Angelica. What does it mean for the future that neither Mother Teresa no Mother Angelica had much use for “Catholic feminism” as it’s usually defined, and that both were completely devoted to John Paul II’s understanding of the unique dignity and vocation of women?
Stay tuned.
George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. Weigel’s column is distributed by the Denver Catholic Register, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Denver. Phone: 303-715-3215.
January 1981
EWTN receives FCC license, the first granted to a monastery.
March 8, 1981
Just before the first satellite dish arrived, Sr. Regina had a vision in which she saw a black sky, a white satellite dish, and a flame emerging from the center. She heard God say, "This is my network, and it will glorify my Son." After the dish arrived a few weeks later, a photograph taken while it was installed reproduced Sr. Regina's vision: a black sky, the white dish, and a red flame emerging from its center. Professional photographers could not account for the red flame. Mother Angelica called it a miracle.
This woman is a saint!
ping
That sounds good coming from a pretty good biographer.
The little bits and pieces I've heard her mention over the years about her vocation and personal weaknesses and the way the network came into existence make for a fascinating story.
She was the only thing I ever watched on that channel. I enjoyed her.
Surely there must be a larger version of that photograph.
This thumbnail looks like a painting for the cover of an SF paperback.
I didn't read it from beginning to end... I kind of started about when the network got started and finished that up to the end. Now I am to when the order first moved to Alabama.
Parts of it make you laugh out loud, parts of it are very sad, parts of it make you mad (usccb stuff) but most of it makes you know that this woman's life was absolutely lived in dedication to God... she is the first one to admit her faults, shortcomings and unworthiness but anything accomplished by her she knows and she says was done by God.
I thank God for EWTN all the time. I also thank God that Mother Angelica is around in my lifetime. I have been blessed to 'know' her. I have to say I never miss 'World Over' --- where else can you see Peggy Noonan and Mary Ann Glendon on the same program?
BTW, I guess the book is doing very well but you'd never know from the lack of media attention to it (or at least I haven't seen any media attention).
Mr. Arroyo's book is remarkable, It contains much new information about Mother Angelica and EWTN never before published.
I'm almost finished Mother Angelica as well. A recommended book for those who think that saints cannot exist in contemporary society. Especially interesting is Arroyo's story of Cardinal Mahony. If you've dismissed Mahony in the past as a harmless buffoon this book will set the record straight. The cardinal was so rabid at Mother Angelica's rightful criticism of his heretical "Pastoral Letter on the Eucharist, that he literally became a medium of evil, waging a 5 year campaign at the highest levels of the Vatican to shut down EWTN. By the grace of God, he was finally rebuffed. Of the Mahony affair, one highly placed college cardinal privately said "Thank God for Mother Angelica-she had the guts to do what we were always afraid to do."
I'm almost finished Mother Angelica as well. A recommended book for those who think that saints cannot exist in contemporary society. Especially interesting is Arroyo's story of Cardinal Mahony. If you've dismissed Mahony in the past as a harmless buffoon this book will set the record straight. The cardinal was so rabid at Mother Angelica's rightful criticism of his heretical "Pastoral Letter on the Eucharist, that he literally became a medium of evil, waging a 5 year campaign at the highest levels of the Vatican to shut down EWTN. By the grace of God, he was finally rebuffed. Of the Mahony affair, one highly placed college cardinal privately said "Thank God for Mother Angelica-she had the guts to do what we were always afraid to do."
It will be interesting to see on Judgment Day, when all are called before the Throne of Christ, which way He directs Mother Angelica and Baloney Mahony. I'd wager He'll direct Mother Angelica to move to His Right (sheep side) and Mahony to move to His Left (goat side).
What did Mahoney write, I've never seen this letter.
mahony's pastoral was a long confusing diatribe that was ignored and forgotten. Below was Mother Angelica's response to Mahony's threats regarding his pastoral letter. She distills the relevant problems with it quite effectively ....
"What came through to me was the principal focus in this letter on assembly, the concentration on assembly by the people in the Church rather than the Eucharist. So, I felt the letter was unclear to what the Church teaches about the Real Presence, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus..."
I found the term "transubstantiation" was "in a very small footnote. I don't know about you, but I don't read footnotes, unfortunately. I read the big print. So, I missed the footnote. Well, I kind of wish that footnote in the body of the letter was clear, and if I overlooked it in the whole letter, I imagine a lot of other people overlooked it.
"The pastoral letter has a whole different language... The word 'presence' is used in the text of the letter but it never says 'Real Presence'... it's a presence of the community, the assembly, the general presence of God in the liturgy, and the presence of the bishop. It doesn't talk about the presence of Jesus, Body, Blood, Soul, or the transubstantiation."
The pastoral letter's reference to Christ as "present in the simple gifts of bread and wine, and in the mystery that is His Church," particularly confusing: "That the presence of Jesus is in the bread and wine, says to me, it's still bread and wine. It has to be changed into the Body and Blood of Christ. It can't be 'in'--that means it's still bread and wine, but He's inside. But He's inside of me... God is inside of everything... I'm a member of the masses; I'm a simple woman, and I don't understand this. Does that mean Christ is present before the Consecration in the bread and wine..? Or does it mean that He is present after the Consecration? Well, if He is present after the Consecration, in what way? Does He just kind of hop into the bread and wine, but it's still bread and wine? Or does it become His Body and Blood? The use of 'in the bread and wine' strongly suggested to me that the Body of Christ exists together with the bread and wine... Here's the bread and wine and here's Jesus... the Church rejects that misunderstanding... If there's still bread and wine, why would I adore Him? Why would I kneel and prostrate myself to bread and wine?
"Such an important letter opened a beautiful chance to explain to the people the Real Presence. The letter says 'What does it mean when the body of Christ comes forward to receive the Body of Christ?' Well, I don't know! And it was never answered in the letter... Am I the Body of Christ? No. And it looks like 'the body of Christ receives the Body of Christ.' [sigh] You know, I got a doctorate in theology, it' one of these they give you, I didn't earn it, but I still didn't know what it meant.
It has so many mistakes, a first year seminarian student would have gotten a D on it!!! Mother should have broken out the red pencil and worked the letter over.......
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