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Mother Angelica: Healed & Reviled
from the March-April 1998 issue For more than forty years Mother Mary Angelica, foundress and leader of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) was in constant physical pain because of a chronic spinal condition. Although many of her viewers never realized the extent of her suffering because of the humor and joy she exudes on her weekly television programs, she was encumbered by a back brace, leg braces and chronic asthma. While praying the Holy Rosary in her office with a recent visitor, she experienced an unusual healing. The visitor asked her to remove the braces from her legs and to try to walk without her crutches. Mother later explained that a heat came over her ankles. "Every time I walked back and forth," she said, "my legs started coming in straight." She was able to walk without her crutches for the first time in over forty years. So too her spinal injury seems to have been fully healed; she no longer needs her back brace. And her asthma? That seems to be gone too, she remarked. As a young novice, Sr. Angelica was injured in an accident that left her partially paralyzed for a short time and unable to walk without crutches until this year. "I have never asked to be healed. To me it was part of my mission," Mother Angelica stated on one of EWTN’s programs the following day. Coincidence?
The timing of her unusual, perhaps miraculous, healing is worth noting. For the past few months Mother has been bitterly criticized by members of the Catholic press, bishops, and priests for her public criticism of Cardinal Roger Mahony’s pastoral letter on the liturgy, "Gather Faithfully Together: A Guide for Sunday Mass" (September 4, 1997). In that letter the cardinal encourages Los Angeles Catholics to "celebrate the diverse experiences, cultures, and charisms that assemble around the one table" of the Mass. He offers practical liturgical directives that are, at best, contrary to the spirit of the norms of the Church, and according to some, the liturgical innovations he outlines are likely to cause further confusion about the nature of the Mass, especially the fundamental doctrine of the Real Presence. On her cable television program, "Mother Angelica Live," Mother expressed her opinion that the cardinal’s letter was an example of the increasing secularization of the Church today, that it confused Catholics about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and added, "I’m afraid my obedience in that diocese would be absolutely zero. And I hope everybody else’s in that diocese is zero." Cardinal Mahony responded immediately to her remarks. He demanded a public apology, which Mother delivered the next week. However, the evening that she offered the apology she continued with her critique, calling the letter "confusing." In the text of the pastoral letter "the word ‘presence’ is used," said Mother, "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." Cardinal Mahony was not satisfied with her apology; in fact, he was further incensed. This time he not only demanded a retraction from her—he specified the retraction was to be written by her bishop, David Foley of Birmingham, and read on four different occasions—he threatened Mother with legal action by taking counsel with canon and civil lawyers. The cardinal is claiming that no one has the right to criticize his pastoral letter. In his letter to Mother, he referred to Canon 753, which obliges Catholics to respect the teaching office of the diocesan bishop. It also specifies that only the pope may correct a bishop’s teaching. He did not, however, acknowledge Canon 212 which addresses the "right, indeed at times the duty" of the faithful to manifest to the sacred pastors their views on matters which concern the good of the Church, and to "make these views known to all of Christ’s faithful." A need for clarity
Writing in the Diocese of Youngstown’s newspaper, the Catholic Exponent, Bishop Thomas Tobin stated: "The misunderstanding of Cardinal Mahony’s letter by some reminds us also of the need to be very clear in teaching the Catholic Faith. [The Cardinal] points out that the traditional Catholic doctrine about the Eucharist is contained in the very first footnote of the letter." But Tobin emphasized that "the fact that the primary teaching of the Church about the Eucharist has been relegated to a footnote is itself very disturbing to some… The faithful need and deserve a solid and unambiguous doctrinal foundation on which to build their Christian lives." Bishop Tobin wondered what drives Mother Angelica and others to be so critical of bishops and cardinals of the Church. "Could it be that some members of the Church have become so outspoken, even defiant," he suggested, "because their legitimate complaints about abuses in the Church have not been taken seriously by Church leaders? Their concern about fuzzy teaching or liturgical aberrations have too often been neglected, sometimes even belittled… Church leaders need to address well-founded complaints seriously, or we will continue to see the marginalization of many good people who just care about the spiritual well-being of the Church." Many U.S. bishops and priests have not only "belittled" Mother Angelica, they have actively sought to have EWTN’s programming yanked from local cable networks. In 1994, Archbishop Rembert Weakland led the Catholic crusade to rid Milwaukee airwaves of Mother Angelica. Likewise Emil Wcela, auxiliary bishop of Rockville Center led a similar campaign on Long Island, New York. (Weakland’s diocesan newspaper even rejected running a photograph of Mother in an EWTN ad because she was clothed in a traditional habit). And now Cardinal Mahony has taken his complaints to the Vatican. The National Catholic Reporter (NCR) reported that the cardinal intends to demand fundamental changes in both the management style and the on-air tone of the "controversial Catholic media outlet." NCR quoted Mahony’s director of media relations as saying, "the cardinal wants the Holy See to do something about Mother Angelica’s whole attitude that she is not responsible to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops or to any of the individual bishops. It goes beyond her criticism of the cardinal—it’s about how the network operates and to whom it is accountable." NCR writes that "Mahony now appears to want more than a retraction from the TV nun. According to sources close to Mahony, he believes EWTN should be reoriented so it plays what he feels is a positive role in the church’s evangelization efforts and cooperates with the U.S. bishops in how it goes about that task." Clearly then, if what NCR has reported is true, Cardinal Mahony would like to co-opt what Mother Angelica has made successful and turn it into an ecclesiastical mouthpiece for the American-Catholic bureaucracy. EWTN’s straight-up orthodoxy, their reverently-celebrated televised Masses, traditional understanding of Catholic doctrine, culture and discipline has most obviously drawn the ire of not a few American bishops. That is an accomplishment in and of itself, considering that dissident Catholic publications, many of which are bitterly critical of the pope and bishops, continue to publish unfettered by the likes of the certain U.S. bishops in question. In short, EWTN has drawn censure and sanction for teaching as "Catholic" what the Church teaches. The network is not the Church, but an instrument of the Church. Even so, many bishops appear unhappy with this particular instrument. In January, for instance, Los Angeles Lay Catholic Mission reported on a letter sent to Mother Angelica from Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Florida. Bishop Lynch, former secretary for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote in his November 19, 1997 letter: "I pray that you will cease these personal and vicious attacks on those whom the Successor of Peter has chosen to lead the Church at this time." The bishop added, "you and your network are not helping me in my office as Shepherd, Pastor and Leader." One might wonder: why the protest from bishops such as Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop Weakland and Bishop Lynch? Doing the bishops’ job
EWTN is likely the world’s largest religious cable broadcasting network, with more than 1,600 affiliates reaching 54 million homes in 34 different countries. Under Mother Angelica’s leadership, EWTN has accomplished what the bishops of the United States have failed to do—and they have indeed tried and failed: to provide a significant Catholic presence on television. Even so, some bishops are unwilling to admit the accomplishment. Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati wrote to one St. Catherine Review reader that EWTN is not "Catholic." Rather, he states, "Mother Angelica appears to be pleased by her independence that allows her to criticize bishops that do not agree with her. Many bishops appear to be equally pleased to be independent of Mother Angelica." More to the point, however, the bishops and Catholic bureaucrats resent her exposing their modernist methods. Mother has always claimed that it is her mission to bring the true light of the faith to the common man, to the broken-hearted who want to hear the unchanging truth of Jesus Christ instead of being subjected to personal speculation, liturgical abuses, doctrinal deviations, and sex education. As Bishop Tobin of Youngstown wrote, "Church leaders need to address well-founded complaints seriously." In a 1994 interview with Thomas Droleskey of The Wanderer, Mother Angelica "went to great lengths to explain that she loves and prays for the bishops; what angers her is that some of Christ’s shepherds are not faithful to the Holy Father. They remain in communion with him juridically, while doing everything possible to undermine his teaching authority—permitting dissidents to preach, to teach, to write, and to hold positions whereby they can browbeat the ‘little people’ who simply want to lead holy lives… The very ones who say non servium est [I will not serve] to the Holy Father expect absolute, unyielding obedience to their edicts. ‘That’s the wrong type of obedience,’ Mother Angelica declared. ‘Souls are being snatched by these wolves, preying upon people brought up to obey.’ But one ‘who is not in union with the Magisterium must not be obeyed!’" How many American bishops, one wonders, would approve of St. Catherine of Siena were she to live today as a so-called "TV-nun?" Well done faithful servant?
There are perhaps many conclusions that can be drawn from Mother Angelica’s unusual healing, especially considering that it occurred after forty years of great suffering, during a time when a prince of the Church is appealing to Rome to have her censured and punished. One possible conclusion is that Christ has rewarded Mother for her commitment to the truth. Might He be saying, "Well done faithful servant"? But others, those who hold Mother and her network in contempt, will busy themselves trying to explain away the unusual occurrence. Tricia Hempel, editor of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati’s Catholic Telegraph wrote in her Feb 20 issue that her paper will not report on Mother Angelica’s healing until it has been ruled a "miracle" by the proper Vatican congregation. Even the U.S. bishops’ agency, Catholic News Service (CNS), prepared a full page story on the remarkable incident. Although the Catholic Telegraph uses the CNS service, they chose not to publicize the healing. Other diocesan papers, however, did run the story. This is not surprising. The same editor, Mrs. Hempel, once told this writer that she isn’t going to give Mother Angelica any more publicity than she already gets. "She’s got more money than God!" complained Mrs. Hempel. The cause of the EWTN success
Mother Angelica does not attribute her network’s great success to her own talents and persistence—although many others would; she gives all the glory to God, the prayers of her community, and perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at her monastery in Irondale, Alabama. Indeed the two pillars of EWTN’s efforts are profound Eucharistic piety and a great devotion to the Mother of God. Mother’s sisters, brothers and priests are first and foremost contemplatives. Their vocation is to the religious life. Their mission is to bring true Church teaching to the common people through the media.–Michael S. Rose For an excellent critique of Cardinal Mahony’s pastoral letter on the liturgy, see the ADOREMUS Statement on "Gather Faithfully Together" in the November, 1997 issue of the ADOREMUS Bulletin (www.adoremus.org): P.O. Box 5858, Arlington VA, 22205. Copies of Cardinal Mahony’s pastoral letter, "Gather Faithfully Together," are available for $5 from Liturgy Training Publications, 1800 N. Hermitage Ave., Chicago IL 60622-1101. It is also available on the World Wide Web: http://www.la-archdiocese.org [ home ] |
Folks, I picked it up in the bookstore and was unable to put it down. Written by Raymond Arroyo, EWTN's news anchor, the book captures the life story of this remarkable woman and her cadre of nuns who, against seemingly insurmountable odds, built up the world's biggest Catholic multimedia network virtually from scratch. Through vivid prose and a sense of wonderment, Arroyo captures the key moments in Mother Angelica's life and the network's development, as well as the personalities of those who shaped it. 