After the National Catholic Reporter’s attack on Mother Angelica, the letters poured in. Fr. Richard Kennedy of Mansfield, Ohio wrote congratulatorily, “I’ve been waiting for an intelligent, comprehensive criticism of EWTN‘s message and format.”
Sorry, Father, but the article you read wasn’t it.
“THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ANGELICA” proclaimed the cover of the July 15, 1994 issue of NCR. Inside, the center spread was headlined “ANGELICA, EWTN PUSH DISNEYLAND CHURCH.” The expose, written by Fr. Raymond A. Schroth, a journalism professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, was intended to be a body blow against the nun and the cable network she founded, but what really was exposed were the pettiness and mean-spiritedness of the writer and publisher.
Schroth, a Jesuit priest, is worried. Mother Angelica and EWTN seem at odds with the brand of Catholicism he espouses. “Because there is no clear alternative for millions of Americans, she and her network, EWTN, are the American Catholic church.” It seems that “for a generation, American Catholicism has striven to present itself as socially concerned, ecumenical, and intellectually competent” (translation: non-dogmatic). “But anyone who watches EWTN will have to conclude that Catholicism is a Disneyland of pseudo-miracles, with a piety that exalts Mary over Jesus, more determined to squelch the Spirit than allow him or her [sic] to speak.”
I don’t subscribe to cable and so have seen little of EWTN‘s programming. Has EWTN ever promoted what might be classified as a “pseudo-miracle”? I don’t know. I do know that Schroth doesn’t seem to be a competent judge of such things. He chastises Fr. Frank Butler for telling on the air “the story of a priest who, when he doubted the real presence during daily Mass, saw and felt the host and wine turn into human flesh and blood in his hands. The miracle is preserved today in a monstrance, he says, and we can actually see the blood vessels in the host.” Schroth seems to think this is nuts; evidently he hasn’t heard of the well-attested Eucharist miracle at Lanciano, Italy. I’m not interested in defending the miraculous nature of what occurred at Lanciano–monographs concerning the scientific and historical investigations are freely available in several languages—but I note with surprise that Schroth seems unaware of the incident and takes it as a matter of course that any such purported miracle must be a product of piety gone overboard.
If his charge that EWTN is a “Disneyland of pseudo-miracles” is suspect, so too is his charge that the programs encourage “a piety that exalts Mary over Jesus.” Proof, please? Schroth offers none. From my experience, this charge almost invariably comes from people who have little Marian piety of their own, so any Marian piety shown by others seems excessive.
I know staffers at EWTN–in the interest of full disclosure I admit that I have appeared on “Mother Angelica Live” two or three times–and know, from a first-hand exposure that Schroth lacks, that the folks at the studio in Irondale, Alabama pray the rosary and meditate before the Blessed Sacrament, which means they have Marian piety and Eucharistic (Christ-centered) piety.
The give-away line for Schroth is the last clause of his sentence, which characterizes Mother Angelica’s kind of Catholicism as one that is “more determined to squelch the Spirit than allow him or her to speak.” Here the ideologue becomes evident. The Holy Spirit is never properly referred to as “she” there is no warrant for this is any theological writing prior to the last twenty years or so—not in Scripture, not in the Fathers, not in the Doctors of the Church, not in any of the popes or councils, not in any of the great theologians. This is mere trendiness, theology subservient to political fads. I do not think it impudent to say that a priest who subscribes to such heterodoxy is hardly competent to judge the orthodoxy of others.
But that doesn’t mean Schroth never gets anything right. He notes that “American Catholics are religiously illiterate.” Quite true. Average Catholics in the pews–loyal, Mass-attending Catholics—are almost entirely uncatechized, because they stopped receiving religious instruction when they stopped attending CCD at age 14.
But Schroth is wroth (forgive me: I couldn’t resist) about what EWTN is doing about this: “EWTN fills that hole with the Baltimore Catechism, or rather their selective version of 1940s Catholicism, which they imagine will restore their lost world. At time of writing, a six-part series of interviews with Vienna Bishop Christoph Schonborn on the new catechism was planned, perhaps, in their eyes, the best opportunity to put the modern theological toothpaste back in the tube.”
In fact, EWTN does not promote the Baltimore Catechism–not that there’s anything wrong with what that compendium taught. But you can’t very well float a network on questions and answers from a child’s catechism, and EWTN hasn’t tried to do so. What it is doing, at Schroth’s own admission, is to promote the most post-Vatican-II-ish catechism around, the Catechism of the Catholic Church–a book for which Schroth has no kind remarks in this article, perhaps because he sees the new catechism, which has sold nearly two million copies in America so far, as a threat to the heterodoxy that is the defining factor of the NCR crowd.
Then come further misrepresentations. Schroth complains because EWTN, “almost by default,” has become “an official broadcaster of the American bishops’ conference and the Denver celebration” ; (World Youth Day ’93). That’s not what Richard W. Daw, the secretary for communications of the USCC, said when writing to NCR: “There is no ‘official broadcaster’ of bishops’ meetings, and there was no ‘official broadcaster’ of the Denver event. When EWTN covers bishops’ meetings, it applies for and is granted press accreditation just like the dozens of other TV and print organizations present. If any of the others wished to televise the meeting gavel-to-gavel as EWTN does, they would be accorded the same access. Similar circumstances prevailed in Denver.”
So Schroth muddled his facts. They’d have been easy to check—a quick call to the USCC would have done it—but in the composition of his article he seems to have relied more on adrenaline than on fact-checking. This is not a good sign from someone who fawns over CBS’s Edward R. Murrow, television’s early icon, and who is taking a sabbatical to complete a biography of news commentator Eric Sevareid, who not infrequently commingled opinions with reportage.
In the next paragraph Schroth complains about EWTN‘s “analysis” of world hot spots, without making allowances that EWTN airs no news programs. Referring to the war in the former Yugoslavia, Schroth writes, “And how should American Catholics respond to this calamity, asks Fr. Ken Roberts, EWTN‘s roving star? Fight smut.” If that’s a proper characterization of what Roberts, a well-known convert and conference speaker, said—”We can end this war by fighting pornography at home!”—then Schroth would be at liberty to call such a comment inane. Although I did not view the program in question, I am sufficiently wary of Schroth’s powers of judgment that I doubt the accuracy of his characterization. I think I can reconstruct the kind of thing Roberts said.
The Australian priest bemoaned the evils of the present day, singling out the war in the Balkans as an example and noting that Scripture sees war as a punishment for sin (not just their sin, but ourstoo). How can we expect to prevent or stop wars, he asked, when our own society is so corrupt? It takes magnanimity, fortitude, and wisdom to keep the peace, but those virtues hardly can co-exist with the licentiousness that manifests itself in such things as pornography. It’s unrealistic to expect us to be able to do much about distant wars if we can’t even restrain our own impulses.
Anyway, that’s the kind of thing I can imagine Roberts saying in the gentle, upbeat, and encouraging tone that attracts thousands of people to his talks. Can such considerations be reduced to “Fight smut”? Not without a reductionism that eviscerates what was being said. Schroth’s summary of Robert’s comments says less about EWTN or Roberts than it does about Schroth’s mind-set.
(Perhaps it is no coincidence that Schroth thinks that for EWTN abortion “sometimes . . . seems the only social evil.” ; Why complain that EWTN is so strongly against abortion? Why not praise the network? Maybe it’s that Schroth can’t bring himself to praise EWTN for anything.)
A few paragraphs later Schroth refers to Fr. Emile LaFranz, of the Center of Jesus the Lord in Schroth’s own New Orleans. According to Schroth, this priest “warns viewers to destroy their Ouija boards, tarot cards, occult books, and New Age paraphernalia, because Satan can use these objects to gain access to our personalities. LaFranz is a good man who, I remember, miffed his yuppie neighbors on the fringe of the French Quarter by serving soup to the homeless at his center. That would be a better story than Ouija boards.”
Let’s admit that both would be good stories–but which is the story that doesn’t get aired by the descendants of Edward R. Murrow and Eric Sevareid? There’s no trouble in getting word out about the good work being done for the down and out; in my own diocese the St. Vincent de Paul center erected a large complex to serve the needs of the homeless and troubled, and the priest who runs the center pops up on local television or in the newspaper every week or so. His work gets plenty of publicity.
So why complain when EWTN is doing a public service by noting the dangers in spiritualism and the New Age? The fact is that thousands of people have been damaged, spiritually and physically, by such things, and each victim began his journey by giving in to idle curiosity.
Can this problem be overemphasized? Sure, just as the number of homeless persons was exaggerated grossly by Mitch Snyder and others whose own projects depended on “proving” that there are far more homeless people than anecdotal evidence and hard statistics suggest. But Schroth shows no proof that EWTN exaggerates in its programs about the occult. He just sneers and passes on.
On occasion one will hear a conservative Catholic grumble about Communion in the hand. Granted, a good argument can be made against the practice, but it is an authorized option, and it is unbecoming to be a nag over the issue.
That’s from the conservative side. Schroth, a liberal, takes the mirror-image view. He doesn’t much like Communion on the tongue, even though it is the normative (= standard, regular) method, with Communion in the hand being the option. It is no accident that John Paul II strongly prefers Communion on the tongue. But the Pope’s example isn’t enough authority for Schroth. He complains that in EWTN‘s televised Masses “all the nuns receive the host on the tongue, as do 95 percent of the congregation.” (He is not bothered that all the nuns he pals around with receive Communion in the hand, as do 95 percent of the other folks he associates with.) “Do they feel somehow unworthy to ‘touch Jesus’?” he asks. This is a dumb question, just as it would be dumb to ask of Schroth’s friends, “Do they feel somehow worthy to `touch Jesus’?”
The fact is that we are all unworthy to receive Communion, yet Christ invites us. Whether we take the host in the hand or on the tongue, we end up “touching” it. “Take and eat” (Matt. 26:26) wasn’t a suggestion—it was a command, and we have the courage to approach the altar only because Jesus instructed us to.
After a long series of complaints about the network’s programs, Schroth asks rhetorically, “Why do I make a point of this? Because the overwhelming tone of so many of these EWTN mini-courses is that the viewers are idiots, incapable of absorbing anything deeper or more complex than the religious training they first received when they were children. Or perhaps, as we used to say in philosophy, Nemo dat quod non habet: No one can teach what he or she has not learned.”
But isn’t that just the point? Just as it is the sinner who has need of confession, not the sinless, so it is the uncatechized, not the theological whiz, who needs basic catechesis. Who can blame people for turning to EWTN, if the network partially fills a void that should have been filled by the viewers’ parishes? Are some of EWTN‘s programs elementary in their content? Of course–and with good reason. Perhaps Schroth has overlooked Hebrews 5:12: “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of God’s word. You need milk, not solid food.”
But not all of EWTN‘s programs are at the level of the old catechisms. The network has aired hundreds of detailed commentaries on the Bible; these have been geared toward a popular yet inquisitive audience, and Schroth is simply wrong in asserting that these are no “deeper or more complex than the religious training [viewers] first received when they were children.” Ten-year-olds have no interest in Bible commentaries.
Yet we should give Schroth his due, since he is on to something: “Nemo dat quod non habet.” Catholics in the pews worry about their children leaving the Church. These concerned parents never had the knowledge to pass along to their offspring, and now, too late, they’re seeing that the eighth sacrament, holy osmosis, doesn’t work. Kids don’t pick up the faith merely by being dragged to Mass, and even CCD courses don’t suffice. They must be instructed at home in a concerted way, but parents who don’t know the faith have nothing to pass along.
These parents need help to make up for their failure to form their children religiously, but, if there is a solution to their problem, they won’t find it by turning to texts heavy with Greek footnotes and with the jargon of Loyola University of New Orleans. First they need to learn the faith themselves, and they need to start at the beginning. Only then can they hope to repair some of the damage caused by their lack of knowledge or industry.
After decrying Mother Angelica’s “obsession” with the “evils of feminism” (aren’t there any?) and “the desire of some women to be ordained” (aren’t these ordination seekers the real obsessed, since what they still seek has been ruled out definitively by Ordinatio Sacerdotalis?), Schroth criticizes the bishops for allowing her to become “a potential threat to their authority.” He wishes they would “curb her stable of stars the way they attempt to hush up university theologians.” (Of course, in most dioceses this would amount to benign neglect, which is not what Schroth has in mind.)
The problem for Schroth is that Mother Angelica has been successful. Some years ago the bishops poured millions into television programming, but the project went nowhere. No one watched the programming—viewers voted “Nay” by switching to other channels. In a fantastically more expensive venture, the late Harry John and his De Rance Foundation squandered as much as $100 million on a Catholic television network that left no residual impact on the Church in America or on American society.
Yet with $8.5 million a year a nun from Alabama goes from success to success. Schroth asks, “Couldn’t the bishops, the Catholic universities, and the Catholic foundations put their heads together and come up with programming that appeals to the mind and soul rather than to anger, resentment, and nunny humor?” They’ve tried, and the answer seems to be “No.”
The reason may be seen in the advice given by Fr. Michael Tueth, the Jesuit who directs the “Sacred Heart Program,” which, apparently, airs on a rival, “ecumenical” network. According to Schroth, Tueth “argues that, rather than attempt a separate network, the bishops should join the United Methodists, Episcopalians, Mormons, Baptists, and other Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish groups and invest more heavily in promoting the Faith and Values Network, a highly professional ecumenical group, whose coverage of the Denver papal visit, for example, was well-researched and objective, in contrast to EWTN‘s.”
I didn’t see EWTN‘s coverage—I was on the scene in Denver and viewed channel 9’s excellent local reportage, which was not seen elsewhere in the country–but over the last year I have heard no one allege that EWTN‘s coverage was unresearched or unobjective. I didn’t see the Faith and Values Network’s coverage either, but I suspect it took so neutral a stance that its coverage was indistinguishable from that of the better secular stations. If so, that isn’t what I, as a pilgrim, would have watched; I’d have preferred “suitably biased” coverage.
Even channel 9 regularly referred to the Pope as “His Holiness” and “the Holy Father,” rather than as just “the Pope” or, more familiarly, “John Paul.” I appreciated the deference when I watched live coverage, and I presume channel 9’s deference was matched by EWTN‘s. But frankly, I have my doubts about whether the commentators on a professedly ecumenical network would treat World Youth Day as a pilgrimage—a religious event—rather than as just an extended news event.
Besides, isn’t there a defeatism in suggesting that the only proper place for Catholic programming is on an ecumenical network where forces militate against a clear explication of the faith? After all, even if you never mention another church directly, in the very act of teaching the distinctive doctrines of the Catholic Church you create tension, you become “divisive.” But the role of an ecumenical venture is to highlight the similarities, the common ground, not the dissimilarities. In itself that’s a good thing, but it’s not the only thing, and it’s a poor way to present a viewer with a rounded understanding.
After all, the Catholic faith is not an amalgam of other faiths. It is not like a Venn diagram used in mathematical set theory, where overlapping circles show a sliver of commonality. To reduce the Catholic faith to its similarities with other religions is to gut the faith, and that is the danger and the temptation when irenicism is the guiding principle.
If EWTN were scrapped in favor of a few hours a week on the Faith and Values Network, viewers would see only the blandest, least offensive form of Catholicism. Of course, I’m not advocating being “offensive” in the usual sense of the word. What I mean is that in our secular society even other Christians are “offended” by distinctive Catholic doctrines, such as those about Mary and the papacy, and secularists go ballistic when it comes to our moral beliefs. Will the Catholic producers on an ecumenical network be able to resist the temptation to water down the faith? I have my doubts, and that is why I want to see EWTN continue.
If there is a consistent refrain in Schroth’s critique of Mother Angelica and EWTN, it is that they are “angry,” yet anger is not evident in anything he quotes from them. If his article evinces anger, it is Schroth’s own—his agitation is palpable—and his anger is exceeded only by the anger in the letters that NCR published in reply to his piece. Nearly all of the letters commend him while excoriating Mother Angelica (usually in quite uncharitable language).
At the beginning of my article Fr. Richard Kennedy is quoted. His short letter ends with a label: Mother Angelica “chose to follow the road to the extreme far right”–and then, one supposes, she fell over the edge of the world. It wasn’t enough for Kennedy to classify her as “conservative” or even as “reactionary.” She had to be placed among the denizens of the “far right,” and not anywhere on the “far right,” but at the “extreme” end of it. Perhaps he thinks her closest neighbor is Attila the Hun.
Another priest, Joseph A. Sanches of Nashville, avers that EWTN brings “confusion and divisiveness to the American Catholic church.” These are code words, of course. I wonder if, in his parish, Sanches teaches from the Catechism of the Catholic Church and publicly supports Humanae Vitae. I refrain from allowing my hopes to be raised, since these documents are “divisive.”
A third priest, Lawrence E. Burns of Blasdell, New York, wonders “how a person in a pre-Vatican II cloister who has apparently rejected all renewal of religious life and liturgy can present herself as the arbiter of where the church should be. I stand in awe of the fact that one angry woman can wreak such havoc on the church while the American bishops, with all their resources, have done so little on TV and in the meantime even seem helpless to deal with this unfortunate aberration.” Whew!
Perhaps Fr. Burns should read again what he didn’t seem to absorb the first time, the words of Vatican II on the religious life. He will discover that Mother Angelica and her nuns are more faithful to the letter and the spirit of Vatican II than are the women religious who have abandoned habits for cardigan sweaters and who have moved from monasteries to apartments.
Is Mother Angelica an “aberration”? In our topsy-turvy world, yes. To Fr. Burns she and what she stands for are ugly aberrations, but he has things upside down. His attitude is best given, perhaps, in an old episode of The Twilight Zone, the episode in which a beautiful woman undergoes plastic surgery so she may appear exactly like others in her society, where all faces are mirror images of the deformed countenance of the dictator. Beauty is ugliness, and ugliness is beauty.
An unintentionally humorous letter was sent in by Steven M. Giovangelo of Los Angeles. He explains that he “came out of 1950s Roman Catholicism, pre-Vatican II religious life studying for the priesthood, but became an Episcopalian 26 years ago when Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae encyclical on the ‘evils’ of birth control was promulgated. Personally, it was the final straw theologically and convinced me of the utter folly of the pretensions of papal infallibility.” In other words, Giovangelo approved of contraception and didn’t want to change his opinion.
But even now he seems uneasy with his decision to go into apostasy. He wants to assure us that he wasn’t alone in switching churches. In fact, he was part of a great wave of converts away from the Catholic faith. “If the truth be known, there are significantly more Roman Catholics in the Episcopal Church than vice versa.”
Whoa! Tell that to former Anglican priest William Oddie and former Anglican bishop of London (now Catholic priest) Graham Leonard. Tell that to the 700-plus Anglican clergymen who recently have crossed the Tiber. Tell that to the dozens of Episcopalian priests who have entered the Catholic priesthood under the special provision overseen by Cardinal Bernard Law. Tell that to the Episcopalian parish in Texas that became Catholic en masse. Tell that to George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, who is upset about so many Anglicans “poping.” Tell that to the statisticians who have verified that, in Britain, Catholics now outnumber Anglicans in church on Sunday.
Giovangelo ends his letter this way: “I have tried repeatedly to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ from Angelica & Company, but all I hear is hatred, negativity, and a worship of `orthodoxy’ subjectively nuanced by their own hidden fears. Such worship, I submit, is the very stuff of idolatry.” Someone should tell him that if he hasn’t heard the gospel on EWTN, it’s because he’s had the volume turned off on his television—either that, or he just doesn’t know the gospel as presented in the Gospels.