Lentorama 2009: Great(?) Moments in Catholics on Television

August 15, 1981: Mother Angelica brings EWTN to cable television

It's hard to talk about the Eternal Word Television Network without talking about Mother Angelica, as without one you'd not have the other.

Ironically for a network that would become increasingly conservative, the idea for EWTN came from Mother Angelica's TV work with Protestants, as she worked on TV shows with both Episcopalians and with televangelists like Pat Robertson and Jim Baaker. Her growing experience with TV led her to want to build her own studio, which she did on the grounds of her monastery in Irondale, Alabama (which she founded after a promise to God when it looked like she may have been permanently crippled in an accident).

The network was originally a mix of religious and secular programming, with the religious programming coming from a variety of Christian sources. Over time, the secular programming was dropped, and the religious programming became more strictly Catholic, including daily mass and other services.

At the same time, Mother Angelica and the network made its conservative shift. The nuns started to wear traditional habits, and the televised mass began to include parts in Latin, and later reverted to having the celebrants face east, with their backs to parishoners, a practice that the bishop of Birmingham banned in a decree that specifically mentioned televised services.

The most obvious outlet for this change was Mother Angelica's program, as she used her platform to rail against the non-traditional and liberal elements in the church. She's dressed down more than one bishop, and even went after a cardinal, Robert Mahoney, when she felt that a letter about the eucharist that he put out didn't hit on transubstantiation enough. She was pressured to apologize, and did so in a fairly half-hearted fashion.

This sort of thing drew more attention from the Vatican, and in order to prevent direct intervention with the network, Mother Angelica resigned from its board in 2000, leaving the network in the hands of laypeople. As it turns out, this has kind of pissed off the conservative and traditional fans of the network, who find that a more liberal element has crept into some of the programming. Mother Angelica herself no longer tapes new shows for the network, but she appears regularly in repeats.