Unexpected chastisement from EWTN founder-to-be
I was one of several hundred people gathered in a church hall in the late 1970s to hear a short Poor Clare nun give a talk on Christian life. The speaker was Mother Angelica, who would later found EWTN, the largest religious broadcasting network in the world.
I was playing guitar with other musicians at a charismatic prayer group that was a gathering of several such groups in northwest Indiana.
Mother Angelica of EWTN surrounded by her accomplishments. Painting by Mark Sanislo.
Mother Angelica was not at that time known for the millions of people she reached around the world with her cable TV and radio ministry, or her epic struggle against all odds to build this empire. She was known for her talks, and her series of small Mini-books on the Catholic faith.
The one thing I remembered about that evening was that she delivered a mild chastisement to the group. I don’t recall the details of her talk, but according to her biography, Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles, she tended to admonish charismatic prayer groups around the country for putting too much emphasis on the special gifts of the Holy Spirit. At that time it struck me as strange to hear an admonishment from an invited speaker. But that was her role as a prophet of our times.
What Mother had that we don’t
I just finished her biography, which is a delightful read. One quality that she had that most of us in the Church don’t is a rocky upbringing that forged a persevering determination to make things work. By this I mean a practical kind of intelligence that takes one quickly from A to B and solves problems in between.
It’s just a theory of mine, but I wonder if her difficult upbringing with divorced parents sharpened her practical approach to surviving. Hardship can make champions. Mother Angelica’s life sure had her share of sufferings. Since her father left her mother, she and her mother did odd jobs such as cleaning laundry to support themselves. These entrepreneurial skills formed the bedrock of her business style later, when she and her fellow Poor Clare sisters made fishing flies to support their lives.
Nothing hard-wires your brain more than the experience that you have to do something right now to pay the rent at the end of the month.
Years later I met Mother Angelica when she attended the Institute on Religious Life’s annual banquet. Working for the IRL, I got to lead her around a bit that night. The crowd was the biggest in my memory working there, and we had to rent a tent to accommodate the numbers. This was the night she shocked the crowd with one of her one-line zingers. She had been battling the US Bishops’ Conference over what could only be called a hostile takeover attempt of her network.
Her conversation with the priest at the other end of the line was firm: “I’ll blow the damn place up before you get your hands on it.” The crowd roared. It wasn’t the last time her listeners would hear the prophet’s cry.
It’s been less than two years since she passed, but her many efforts continue to produce fruit for the Church.
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