THE ODYSSEY OF MOTHER ANGELICA

Catholic League ^ | October 2005 | William Donohue

[NYer]

Like most Catholics, I know Mother Angelica through EWTN (Eternal World Television Network). Now, thanks to Ray Arroyo's inspiring portrait of her, I know her much better. The subtitle of Mother Angelica accurately reads, The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles. Yes, it is all that and more—it is a gripping tale of a woman who suffered greatly yet always managed to beat the odds.

Born Rita Rizzo, and reared in Canton, Ohio, Mother Angelica experienced poverty, a broken home, maltreatment, multiple physical ailments, jealously, back stabbing, betrayal—she was even shot at—but nothing could stop her determination. It does not exaggerate to say that the object of her determination never had anything to do with her—it always had to do with God.

In her lifetime, Mother established the Poor Clare Nuns of Perpetual Adoration and gave birth to the Franciscan Friars of the Eternal Word and the Sisters of the Eternal Word. She built the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, as well as the largest shortwave network in the world and the world's first Catholic satellite network. Not bad for a high school graduate who had everything going against her.

Her father was abusive, both physically and verbally, and eventually abandoned her (he tried to reconcile with her later in life). It took such a toll on her that she wondered why God would ever subject a little girl to such a miserable family. It also meant that she missed out on what other kids were used to, so much so that one of her cousins would later say of her, "She was an adult all her life. She never had a childhood."

The nuns she met in school were anything but kind. Their opposition to divorce unfortunately led them to oppose the children of divorce, and this was something the young Rita couldn't bear (the priests her mother encountered were just as condemning). Some family members were just as cruel, including an uncle who verbally beat up on her mother so badly that Rita literally threw a knife at him.

Yet there were miracles. There was the time when, at age eleven, she was crossing a street only to see two headlights staring her right in the face. She thought she was dead. Incredibly, she was able to jump high enough that she avoided being hit. The driver called it "a miracle," while Rita and her mother dubbed it a graceful "lifting."

Her stomach ailments were so bad that she was forced to wear a corset. The doctors tried to help, but to little avail. Then she met a stigmatic, Rhoda Wise, and that's when things began to change. One day, when she was 20, a voice told her to get up and walk without the corset, and she did just that. Immediately, her suffering was relieved. Her doctor, of course, insisted it had to with his treatments, but Rita knew better.

Her mother wasn't too happy when she learned that Rita had decided to enter a Cleveland monastery. After all, she had first been abandoned by her husband, and now her daughter was leaving her as well. But in time she would come to accept it. As for Rita, her failing knees (and the five stories of steps she had to traverse at the monastery), led to her being dispatched back home to Canton.

After nine years in the cloister, Sister Angelica took her solemn vows. Her legs and her back were so twisted she could hardly walk (she wore a body cast), leading her to beg God to allow her to walk again in exchange for a promise: she would build a monastery in the South. What she wanted was a "Negro apostolate," a cloistered community in service to poor blacks. After undergoing spinal surgery, and after being rebuffed initially by her bishop, she got her way; approval was given to build a monastery in Birmingham. Then came to the hard part—coming up with the bucks to pay for it.

In 1959, the year before she became Mother Angelica, she spotted an ad in a magazine for fishing lure parts. She decided that the nuns would go into the fishing-lure business, thus was St. Peter's Fishing Lures born. In 1961, Sports Illustrated honored her with a plaque for her "special contribution to a sport." Remarkably, this half-crippled nun with no business experience was able to garner national attention for her entrepreneurial acumen. It was just the beginning.

Building a monastery in the South in the early 1960s, especially one that would service African Americans, was not exactly a popular enterprise. It didn't take long before local opposition mounted, even to the point of violence: Mother Angelica was shot at one night by one of the protesters (he barely missed).

Amidst what seemed like eternal struggles to keep the revenue coming, Mother started the Li'l Ole Peanut Company. Score another hit: By the end of 1968, she paid off all the monastery debt. Over the next decade, she would write books and give talks, managing to walk with an artificial hip.

In 1978, her life was forever altered when she was introduced to a TV studio in Chicago. Instantly, she got the bug: she had to have one of her own. Then came the first of many disappointments dealing with the bishops. When she contacted them about a Catholic TV show, none replied. Undeterred, she secured funding from New York philanthropist Peter Grace, and in 1981 got a young lawyer and Catholic deacon, Bill Steltemeier, to craft a civil corporation called the Eternal Word Television Network. Bill would remain a loyal and talented ally throughout the tumultuous times to come.

When word reached Rome that a cloistered abbess was traveling the country in pursuit of her broadcasting dream, she ran into trouble with both American bishops and Vatican officials. But thanks to Cardinal Silvio Oddi, head of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, she prevailed.

It was never easy. Every time Mother Angelica thought she was in the clear, another bishop would raise objections to her venture. Indeed, the bishops tried to outdo her by launching their own effort, the Catholic Telecommunications Network of America (CTNA). It was clear from the beginning that Mother Angelica was seen as a threat: EWTN had a traditional orientation and CTNA took a modernist stance. EWTN won. CTNA collapsed.

It was not easy for the bishops to watch their own creation flounder while EWTN won the admiration of Pope John Paul II. Adding to their chagrin was their inability to get Mother Angelica to switch to a new interfaith satellite network. As to her own operations, Mother Angelica did not take kindly to those clerics who questioned her authority to showcase some bishops, but not others. "I happen to own the network," she instructed. When told that this would not be forever, she let loose: "I'll blow the damn thing up before you get your hands on it."

In 1989, a report by the bishops complained that EWTN rejected "one out of every three programs submitted by the bishops conference." The bishops and Mother Angelica were clearly on a collision course: she had no tolerance for the theological dissidence that was tolerated by many bishops and their staff. The last straw came when the bishops conference sent a show to be aired featuring a cleric promising female ordination under the next pope.

The dissent, whether voiced by the Catholic Theological Society of America, or by feminist nuns who favored gender-neutral language in the Catholic Catechism, distressed Mother badly. She even had to endure being lobbied to push for "inclusive" language in the Catechism by the likes of "conservatives" such as Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston. That he failed should surprise no one.

Mother was more than distressed—she was angered beyond belief—when a woman portrayed Jesus doing the Stations of the Cross at World Youth Day in Denver, 1993. "Try it with Martin Luther King," she said on the air. "Put a white woman in his place and see what happens."

She was not prepared for what happened next. The reaction of leading bishops to her outburst was swift and vocal. Archbishop Rembert Weakland, who like Law would later be forced to resign in disgrace, blasted her for what he labeled "one of the most disgraceful, un-Christian, offensive, and divisive diatribes I have ever heard." He had nothing to say about the incident that provoked her.

The bishops weren't finished with her. In retaliation, they recalled priests who had been assigned to work at EWTN, and attempts were made to get EWTN thrown off diocesan TV channels around the country.

Just when it seemed things couldn't get any worse, Mother Angelica and Roger Cardinal Mahony locked horns. In 1997, she accused the Los Angeles archbishop of questioning the Real Presence: "In fact," she said, "the cardinal of California is teaching that it's bread and wine before the Eucharist and after the Eucharist." She added that she would not obey an Ordinary like him if she lived there, and hoped that those who did would no longer provide him with their assent.

That was it. Mahony exploded. But while demanding that Rome punish Mother Angelica—and this went on for years—Mahony's archdiocese was home to "a cavalcade of dissenters and anti-Vatican agitators." This is the stuff that drives orthodox Catholics mad.

While she survived in the end, Mother Angelica had to ward off attempts by the bishops to take control of EWTN (one archbishop allegedly told her that certain bishops "want to destroy you"). To make sure this would never happen, Mother Angelica resigned from the network in order to save it: the bishops would have no lien on a purely autonomous, lay-run, civil entity.

Twenty years ago, Ben Armstrong of the National Religious Broadcasters aptly dubbed her, "the Bishop Fulton Sheen of this generation." Cardinal J. Francis Stafford was also right when he observed that "Mother Angelica represented the plain Catholic, who is 90 percent of the Church." Let it also be said that she overcame all kinds of adversity, and she did it all—and continues to do it all—for Jesus.

[NYer]

Here's a review, written by a priest from Seattle, WA.

A Dangerous Book, September 12, 2005

Reviewer:

Fr Phillip Bloom "parish priest" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

Last week a parishioner gave me Raymond Arroyo's unauthorized biography of Mother Angelica. With mild curiosity, I read the dust jacket and table of contents. My plan was to skim the book, then return to it when I had more time. I liked Mother Angelica, but I knew little about her life or how she founded the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). I also admired Raymond Arroyo, often listening to his news and interview program, *The World Over.* As I began skimming the biography, I quickly became hooked. It turned out to be what I call a "dangerous book." Every year or two I will pick up a book which so grabs my attention that I wind up devoting every spare moment to reading it. Besides the most basic duties, everything else takes second place.

I was expecting a somewhat saccharine story about a folksy contemplative sister. Instead the book depicts what to me is the most difficult reality: the intense and often bitter suffering to which God apparently calls some souls. With the unflinching eye of an investigative reporter, Raymond Arroyo recounts painful details of her childhood. Rita Rizzo (the girl who would become Mother Angelica) had a wandering father who abandoned her at an early age. Her mother, never well balanced, became unhinged by the divorce - at that time a terrible stigma - and wound up reversing the normal mother-daughter roles. She increasingly demanded emotional support from her daughter and provided very little in return.

In her twenties, Rita met a Catholic convert turned mystic, who transformed the young woman's life. Entering a contemplative religious order, against her mother's bitter protests, she encountered more painful forms of suffering. Physical ailments (such as knees swollen to the size of cantaloupes) almost ended her religious vocation. Raymond Arroyo, cautious as a newsman should be, relates the seeming miraculous cure which enabled her to continue in the convent.

The story of how this contemplative sister founded a world-wide television and radio network is too complex to describe here. Without giving away the story, let me state that it was hardly a smooth journey from one triumph to the next. The biography reads like a novel depicting the suspense and mounting opposition which Mother Angelica and her sisters confronted. Inability to pay enormous bills, the betrayal of co-workers and the death of dear ones (including her mother who had become one of her sisters) led to bouts of anguish and near-despair. During this long "dark night of the soul" only her iron will and her prayer to Jesus kept her going.

This book will probably be read mainly by "conservatives." That is a shame - and perhaps makes this a dangerous book in another sense. It is easy for those concerned with doctrinal integrity to feel betrayed by official teachers. The book describes Mother Angelica's strong reaction even against bishops who, for example, promoted women's ordination or who watered down difficult teachings (such as marital fecundity). In that atmosphere, one can take aim at the wrong target - as Mother Angelica sometimes did. For example in his 1987 visit to the U.S., the pope was in Phoenix for the Feast of the Holy Cross (September 14). The organizers provided a large, bare cross for him to kiss. Mother Angelica railed against the organizers, seeing this as a sign of how the American Church wants to take Jesus off the cross.

No doubt every pastor in the country, including the most orthodox, has had conservatives attack him for what they perceive as liturgical or doctrinal deviations. They can magnify the smallest misstep until it seems to include all the abuses of the past four decades. For this kind of misguided zeal, many pastors are only too eager to lay the blame at Mother Angelica's feet. "Another complaint from one of the EWTN crowd."

Whether Raymond Arroyo's book will increase polarization or reduce it depends on how people read the book. It is easy to get caught up in the political dimension and miss what I believe is Raymond's deeper purpose: to show us a woman who came from a difficult background and who by her own admission has many flaws, but who has embraced suffering with its redemptive power. In a word, he wants to help us glimpse the mystery and the triumph of the cross.

[bourbon]

Has anyone read this book yet? I almost bought it the other day, and I'd be interested to hear some reviews from Freepers.

[Carolina]

EWTN won. CTNA collapsed.

Sweet.

[NYer]

From EWTN's 20th Anniversary ....

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 photographs could not account for the red flame. Mother Angelica called it a miracle.

Actual photograph

[NYer]

Has anyone read this book yet? I almost bought it the other day, and I'd be interested to hear some reviews from Freepers.

Normally, I struggle with books (reading puts me to sleep :-). I could not put this book down!! When the power to my home went out the other night, I read the book by flashlight. You will be amazed at Mother's simple, yet powerful faith.

[dsc]

"Whether Raymond Arroyo's book will increase polarization or reduce it"

Why is it bad to increase polarization?

Whether it's political, economic, or theological leftism, the modus operandi is to win without opposition through deceit.

When people begin to realize they've been had, their opposition to the left becomes stronger. This provokes the left to ever-more-vicious attacks on their opponents.

I think this kind of polarization is far preferable to allowing the left to lull us all to sleep and march us off a cliff.

I say more polarization is needed, not less. Every increment in polarization represents an increase in the number of people whose eyes have been opened, and in the left's desperation.

[markomalley]

Good book. And yes it is a dangerous book...to the liberals.

[RobbyS]

Reminding us that saints are "dangerous" people. They threaten our easy acceptance of the Zeitgeist.

[RobbyS]

It also showed me that Arroyo is different from what I saw. He is no sentimentalist but a spiritually strong man. Mother is fortunate in her biographer--and employee.

[undirish01]

Buy the book.

For me, it was like going on a spiritual retreat.

I cannot recommend it enough.

Especially look for the "kudos" JPII kept giving her whenever she would travel to Rome. Basically, he told her in so many words to keep doing what she was doing!

Mother Angelica R-O-C-K-S!

[Campion]

It's a fantastic, gripping, and enjoyable book ...

... unless you're Roger Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles. :-)

[redhead]

My first impression when I walked in the doors to the Adoration Chapel at the old monastery was how much SMALLER it was than it looked on television. And, "Mother A" LOOKED smaller, too, but she is a little giant. It was a deep honor to be in her presence and to meet all the priests and laypeople we had seen only on television. God chose a strong sword when he picked her, and she is not finished yet. May He bless and increase all that she has accomplished for Him on earth.

[franky]

We are seeing before our own eyes two Saints in Mother Angelica and Bill Steltemeier. The souls they lead to heaven will attest to that.

[Aquinasfan]

Has anyone read this book yet?

Yes. It's 5+ stars. Her story is amazing, heartwarming, inspiring and almost too incredible to believe. On top of that, Raymond has written about her biography in a highly readable novelistic form. I can't recommend the book highly enough.

I've since passed it on to a Protestant co-worker. It can be a great evangelistic tool.

[Aquinasfan]

********** SPOILER ALERT ***************

I'm about to give away an important miracle in her life, so stop reading now if you want to read about it in the book. Of all the miracles in her life, I found the $600k donation for the dish payment to be the most amazing. Mother Angelica had pushed EWTN to the limit in her effort to get it up and running. The day the first satellite dish arrived at EWTN, EWTN was broke. The driver said he could not deliver the dish without payment... of $600k. Mother Angelica stalled. Within a short amount of time EWTN received a call from a man who was sailing his in the Atlantic. He had just viewed EWTN for the first time. He was calling to make a donation of, you guessed it, $600k.

But that's not the end of the story. Mother needed the money immediately. She asked the donor if he would wire the money. He did.

[Nihil Obstat]

Thank God for Mother Angelica and EWTN.

[It's me]

Yes. Very good book and an easy read.
Mother Angelica suffered very much and she has a lot to show for it.
Make me think my life is very, very easy.

[paw prints]

I just loved Raymond Arroyo's book and think Mother Angelica is AWESOME!!!!!!!!

God bless you, Mother!

[AlaninSA]

Buy it! It's a great book. Best of all, you can buy it from EWTN and help support the network.

Excellent book - my wife and I have both read it and very much enjoyed it.