What went wrong at Eternal Word Television Network?
Hoping to
avoid a takeover by the American bishops, Mother Angelica resigned from the
board of directors of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) in March of
2000. She relinquished all control over the network she had founded in 1981.
With the departure of that feisty and combative nun, EWTN underwent a change
for the worse.
This
sure-to-be-controversial book contends that since the departure of its
foundress, EWTN has been purveying to millions of Catholics a strange brew of
the orthodox and the heterodox, the sacred and the profane. The anti-liberal
Popes before the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) would have viewed much of
EWTN’s content as Modernist corruptions of the Faith.
Pope Saint
Pius X condemned Modernism as a deadly system of errors. The Modernist views
every aspect of the Faith - from liturgy, to doctrine and dogma, to Catholic
practices and devotions - as subject to change and “updating” in keeping with
“modern times”. St. Pius declared: “There is no part of Catholic truth from
which they hold their hand, none that they do not strive to corrupt”.
Basing
itself on extensive evidence taken from EWTN’s own content, and comparing that
content to the perennial belief and practice of the Church, the book shows that
EWTN’s “moderately Modernist” version of the Faith is precisely what St. Pius X
had in view when he condemned Modernism in all its forms, including what His
Holiness called “the Modernist as reformer”.
The book
places the problem with EWTN in the larger context of the post-Vatican II crisis
in the Church, which resulted from a Modernist insurrection during and after
the Council.
The author
notes that this breakthrough, with all its disastrous consequences, was
foreseen by the future Pope Pius XII when he was still Vatican
Secretary of State. Referring to “the Blessed Virgin’s messages to little Lucy
of Fatima,” the future Pope spoke of “this persistence of Mary about the
dangers which menace the Church”. He warned of the Modernist “innovators” all
around him in the Church, who were poised to attempt “the suicide of altering
the faith, in her liturgy, her theology and her soul”. He predicted that “a day
will come… when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted”.
Four years
after the death of Pius XII in 1958, that day came with the commencement of the
Second Vatican Council. Forty years after the Council’s conclusion, any
reasonable observer of the post-conciliar crisis in the Church would agree that
Pius XII’s dire warnings, uttered in light of the prophecy of the Mother of God
at Fatima, have come to pass. The Modernist
“innovators” have triumphed, and the Church has been afflicted by a collapse of
faith and discipline on a scale not seen since the Arian heresy spread
throughout nearly the entire Church in the fourth century.
The author
shows that the “moderately Modernist” version of Roman Catholicism EWTN purveys
on television and over the Internet to millions of Catholics embodies much of
what the “innovators” feared by Pius XII had in mind. The result is far more
insidious than any open heresy, for EWTN’s “fans” are induced to imbibe
spiritual poison along with seeming spiritual goods. The unwary thus accept
under the guise of orthodoxy many of the errors and abuses the Church condemned
before the Council.
At the same
time, EWTN uses its power and influence to marginalize as “extreme
traditionalists” faithful Catholics who try to defend their Church against “the
suicide of altering the faith, in her liturgy, her theology, and her soul,”
which EWTN is helping to advance.
The author
demonstrates that while EWTN holds itself out as the gold standard of Catholic
orthodoxy today, it is actually a major promoter of Modernist innovation in the
Church. EWTN is therefore a major obstacle to the widespread return to
traditional Catholic belief and practice in all its integrity - the only way to
end the crisis in the Church. Catholics thus have a duty to oppose what EWTN is
doing and to call for its correction.
This book
will perhaps shock and outrage many, but the overwhelming evidence it presents will
convince the open-minded that EWTN is indeed “a network gone wrong”.
Paperback. 288pp.