EWTN: A NETWORK GONE WRONG How the Eternal Word Television Network is contributing to the spread of “silent apostasy” in the Roman Catholic Church Christopher A. Ferrara 1 “If it were a matter which concerned them alone, We might perhaps have overlooked it; but the security of the Catholic name is at stake.” Pope Saint Pius X, concerning the errors of the modernists Preface With the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of his successor, Benedict XVI, a new era has begun in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. But the crisis that has wracked the Church since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) goes on, even if the faithful hope that during the present pontificate measures will at last be taken to bring the crisis to an end. Over the past forty years a growing number of Catholics have come to recognize what is manifest: that the postconciliar crisis began with, and has resulted from, a host of previously unheard-of ecclesial innovations, imposed in the name of the Council, which have provoked confusion and disorder and led to a massive turning away from the faith¾an apostasy¾in the Catholic Church. The theme of this book is that the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) both exemplifies and promotes these ruinous novelties, and thus has contributed to the crisis itself. It is the author’s burden to demonstrate that with the departure of its foundress, Mother Angelica, from a leadership role, EWTN has 2 taken a sharp turn toward what Pope St. Pius X condemned as the heresy of modernism, as it attempts to combine Catholicism with rock and roll, show business and the worst novelties of the postconciliar epoch. While EWTN was once a sign of hope for a Catholic restoration, it has become instead a major factor in the modernist innovation of the Church since the Council: a mixture of truth and error, orthodoxy and heresy, the sacred and the profane. EWTN now functions as an organ of what is aptly dubbed “New Church”¾a kind of faux church that exists parasitically within the host organism, which is the unchanged and unchangeable Roman Catholic Church of all time. The author will show that the unprecedented emergence of “New Church” is the very essence of the postconciliar crisis, and that this development was predicted in the Third Secret of Fatima, as Pope Pius XII indicated in a stunning prophesy that figures largely in this book. The author also shows that even as EWTN promotes all manner of destructive ecclesial innovation, EWTN also presents itself as the standard of authentic Catholicism and calls for the shunning of Catholics who defend the perennial Faith without alteration. EWTN is thus not merely a passive adopter of novelty, but an active promoter of ecclesial revolution. For these reasons, the author concludes, EWTN¾a worldwide television, radio and Internet presence¾must now be considered one of the foremost agents of modernist apostasy in the Church and a positive danger to the welfare of souls, despite certain good elements in its programming. Thus, it is not Catholics who defend the perennial Faith who must be shunned, but rather EWTN and the rest of the “New Church” establishment, which has been leading the Church toward ruin over the past forty years of ecclesial decay and decline. Should anyone take the trouble to respond to this book, let him begin here, where the author stresses that he does not intend to suggest that any of the EWTN directors or celebrities mentioned 3 critically in the following pages are all necessarily subjectively guilty of apostasy, modernism, formal heresy or any other deliberate offense against the Faith. Such guilt is a matter of Divine Judgment, and the personal piety and sincerity of individuals is here not in question. Words, however, have their objective meanings, and deeds their objective consequences. It is the duty of every Catholic to oppose words and deeds that undermine the faith, give scandal, disturb the good order of the Church and endanger the welfare of souls¾especially when those words and deeds are televised throughout the world to audiences of millions of Catholics and non-Catholics by a lay-run organization that has absolutely no authority in the Church, yet creates the impression that it represents the best of what the Church is. The honest critic must confront the evidence presented in the following pages, rather than turn the matter into an outraged defense of the alleged subjective motives of this or that person. Let the critic address what a person is shown to have said or done, not what he “meant” to say or do according to some hidden intention elaborated after the fact. Nor should anyone who might wish to respond to this book waste his time demonstrating that certain elements of what EWTN presents are soundly Catholic. That this is so is not only stipulated at the beginning of the book, but is in fact the crux of the problem with EWTN: that it combines things of the Faith with things inimical to the Faith, thus attacking the integrity of what Pope St. Pius X called “the Catholic name.” The combination of the orthodox with the heterodox is the essence of modernism. As Pius X declared in condemning the writings of the modernists: “Hence in their books you find some things which might well be expressed by a Catholic, but in the next page you find other things which might have been dictated by a rationalist.” Let the critic, therefore, address the evidence of things inimical to the Faith, rather than attempting to prove what is not in dispute. Those who direct EWTN may believe they are doing a service to the Church and that they have the right to engage in their public mission. It is the author’s conviction, however, that if they 4 consider attentively the evidence of what they are promoting, they will no longer have the refuge of good faith. Having taken upon themselves a public religious mission, those responsible for EWTN become subject to public criticism from fellow Catholics who, out of their own sense of duty, oppose what EWTN is doing. And it is an act of charity, not unkindness, to oppose errors—from whatever source—that threaten the integrity of the Faith and therefore the welfare of souls. It is in this spirit of fraternal correction, however forcefully expressed, that this book was written. INTRODUCTION Having been silenced by the Vatican since 1960, the year the Third Secret of Fatima was to be revealed to the Church and the world, Sister Lucy of Fatima went to her eternal reward on February 13, 2005. On April 3, 2005 the long reign of John Paul II ended with his own death, and Catholics now pray for the repose of his soul. But the crisis in the Church rages on¾just as predicted in the Third Secret. Millions of Catholics remain unconvinced that the Vatican’s disclosure of the obscure vision of a “bishop in white” being executed outside a half-ruined city is all there ever was to the Secret that had been kept under lock and key in the Vatican for more than forty years. Speaking for members of the faithful all over the world, Mother Angelica, the feisty and tradition-minded foundress of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), made the following declaration on her live television show of May 16, 2001: 5 As for the Secret, well I happen to be one of those individuals who thinks we didn’t get the whole thing. I told ya! I mean, you have the right to your own opinion, don’t you, Father? There, you know, that’s my opinion. Because I think it’s scary... A few days later, Mother Angelica was taken off the air. One might say she had been “Sister Lucy-ized.” Since 2001 Mother Angelica has suffered two strokes, the second of which prevented her from returning as EWTN’s main host¾at least according to the “official” updates on her health at EWTN’s website. Mother’s role is now reduced to leading the Rosary on camera and the broadcast of her old television shows¾censored for “theological correctness” by EWTN’s current management, which, as we shall see, has become decidedly modernist in its orientation. With Mother Angelica’s departure as the network’s signature personality, EWTN’s militantly Catholic edge was lost immediately and has never been recovered. An “ecumenical,” watered-down blandness, delivered largely by ex-Protestant ministers, combined with lame attempts at “cool” Catholicism with a heavy emphasis on rock music, have all but replaced the robust Roman Catholicism that fiery Italian nun (formerly Rita Rizzo) exemplified. EWTN’s programming now exhibits the same emasculation and liberalization of the Church militant that we see everywhere today in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. As we shall see, EWTN has even gone so far as to promote the Judaization of Catholic worship by a movement whose members insist upon calling themselves “Hebrew Catholics.” The original vision of the network as a counter-modernist force has clearly been lost. Gone is the kind of anti-modernist fervor we witnessed when Mother blasted the American bishops for allowing a woman to perform the role of Christ at World Youth Day in Denver 1993. “You create nothing. You destroy everything,” I remember her saying, as she almost shook with 6 righteous anger before the cameras. In that very broadcast, which I shall never forget, Mother vowed that in reaction to the increasingly dissolute state of the Church in America, she and her fellow Poor Clare Sisters would return to the wearing of full habits, which they did immediately.